K 


I 


MOLIERE 

HIS    LIFE   AND    HIS   WORKS 


BY 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

•  <  » 

PROFESSOR   OF   DRAMATIC   LITERATURE   IN   COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 


WITH   PORTRAITS 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK   ::    ::    ::   ::   ::   ::    1910 


COPYKIGHT,   1910,  BY 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
Published  October,  1910 


TO   MY  WIFE 


235567 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

IN  this  biography  I  have  striven  specially  for  three 
things:  —  first,  to  set  forth  the  facts  of  Moliere^s  life, 
stripped  of  all  the  legends  which  compass  it  about; 


jsecond,  to  trace  his  development  as  a  dramatist, 
ing  it  plain  how  cautiously  he  advanced  injiis  arTand 
how  slowly  he  reached  the  full  expansion  of  his  power; 
and  thirdly,  to  show  his  intimate  relation  to  the  time  in 
which  he  livefL  the  ftlitterirtfl  bepinninp;  of  the  reign  of 
Louis  XIV.  I  have  endeavored  always  to  center  atten- 
tion on  MoUf.rr  nimcglfj  the  melancholy  humorist  who 
was  companionable  and  friendly,  and  whose  career  was 
cut  short  before  his  genius  had  completely  revealed  itself. 
In  one  important  particular  this  biography  differs  from 
most  of  the  more  recent  attempts  to  consider  Moliere's 
life.  I  have  sought  to  establish  it  solidly  on  the  ad- 
mitted facts,  and  I  have  therefore  resolutely  refrained 
from  utilizing  two  notorious  libels,  one  on  Moliere  and 
the  other  on  his  widow,  "Elomire  Hypocondre"  and  the 
"Fameuse  Comedienne/'  Holding  these  abusive  pam- 
phlets to  be  wholly  beneath  credence,  I  have  borrowed 
no  hints  and  I  have  drawn  no  inferences  from  either 
of  them. 


viii  PREFATORY  NOTE 

Alfred  de  Vigny  called  a  man  fortunate  who  was  able 
in  his  maturity  to  carry  out  a  plan  formed  in  his  youth; 
and  this  much  of  happiness  I  may  claim,  as  it  is  now 
nearly [  forty  years  since  I  first  began  to  hope  that  I  might 

npp  Hay  hfi  flfrle  to  write  a  life  of  Moliere. 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 

COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 
IN  THE  CITY  OF  NEW  YORK. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PACK 


Mali  ere.     By  Richard  Watson  Gilder       ....  xi 

I.    His  FAMILY  AND  His  EDUCATION i 

II.     His  APPRENTICESHIP  AND  His  WANDERINGS   .     .  22 

III.  His  EARLIEST  PLAYS 44 

IV.  THE  'PRECIEUSES  RIDICULES' 67 

V.     FROM  'SGANARELLE'  TO  THE  TACHEUX'    ...  83 

VI.     His  FRIENDSHIPS  AND  His  MARRIAGE  ....  100 

.  T  THE  *£COLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS    .  113 

VIII.    MOLIERE  AND  Louis  XIV 133 

xJX.     'TARTUFFE' 151 

X.    'DON  JUAN' 175 

XI.    MOLIERE  AND  THE  DOCTORS 190 

XII.    THE  'MISANTHROPE* 202 

XIII.  FROM  THE  'M£DECIN  MALGRE  Lui'  TO  'GEORGE 

DANDIN' 223 

XIV.  THE  'AVARE' 243 

XV.    'MONSIEUR  DE  POURCEAUGNAC'  AND  THE  'BOUR- 
GEOIS GENTILHOMME' 259 

iz 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XVI.     FROM   '  PSYCHE  '   TO  THE   'COMTESSE    D'ESCAR- 

BAGNAS' 274 

XVII.    THE  TEMMES  SAVANTES' 287 

XVIII.    THE  'MALADE  IMAGINAIRE'  AND  THE  DEATH  OF 

MOLIERE 308 

XIX.     MOLIERE  THE  MAN 322 

XX.    MOLIERE  THE  COMIC  DRAMATIST 339 

XXI.    MOLIERE  AND  SHAKSPERE 361 

La  Bonne  Comedie.     By  Austin  Dobson       .     .     .  375 


MOLIERE 

He  was  the  first  great  modern.      In  his  art 
The  very  times  their  very  manners  show; 

But  for  he  truly  drew  the  human  heart 

In  his  true  page  all  times  themselves  shall  know. 

RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER. 


MOLIERE 

CHAPTER  I 
HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION 

MOLIERE — to  give  to  Jean  Baptiste  Poquelin  the  name 
by  which  he  made  himself  known  to  posterity,  just  as  Marie 
Francois  Arouet  is  remembered  only  as  Voltaire — Moliere 
is  in  many  ways  the  central  figure  in  all  French  literature. 
He  is  the  embodiment  of  certain  dominant  characteristics 
of  the  French  people;  in  him  we  find  its  social  instinct,  its 
hatred  of  affectation,  its  lack  of  spirituality,  its  relish  for 
the  concrete,  its  girding  humor  and  its  dramatic  ingenuity. 
But  he  is  more  than  French,  for  his  genius  transcends  the 
boundaries  of  race;  it  has  the  solid  elements  of  the  uni- 
versal and  of  the  permanent. 

Moliere  is  the  great  master  of  comedy  in  its  finest  not 
less  than  in  its  broadest  aspects.  He  is  the  foremost  of 
comic  dramatists,  the  model  of  all  who  came  after  him  and 
the  superior  of  almost  all  who  went  before.  The  humor- 
ous fantasies  of  Aristophanes  are  not  narrowly  comedy,— 
rather  are  they  lyrical-burlesque.  The  lauded  comedies  of 
Menander  are  lost  to  us,  and  they  can  now  be  dimly 
glimpsed  only  through  Latin  adaptations.  Plautus,  as 
robust  a  fun-maker  as  Moliere,  lacks  elevation  as  he  lacks 
breadth  of  outlook.  Terence,  with  all  his  taste  and  delicacy, 


i"  MOLIERE 

is  remote  from  the  hearty  reality  of  large  comedy.  Shak- 
spere  put  his  supreme  comic  creation,  Falstaff,  into  a 
loosely  knit  chronicle-play  in  two  parts;  and  his  lighter 
pieces,  ever  delightful  as  they  are,  must  be  classed,  some 
as  romantic-comedies  and  others  as  frank  farces;  and  he 
never  essayed  the  comedy-of-manners  or  the  comedy-of- 
character,  pure  and  simple. 

Through  the  labor  of  many  devoted  students  we  have 
been  put  in  possession  of  the  more  important  facts  of 
Moliere's  career.  We  know  his  family,  his  youth,  and  his 
education;  we  can  follow  his  footsteps  where  he  goes  to 
and  fro  as  a  strolling  player;  we  can  analyze  his  modest 
efforts  as  a  'prentice  playwright,  and  we  can  trace  the 
growth  of  his  genius  after  his  return  to  Paris,  when  he 
brought  out  his  later  masterpieces  in  swift  succession 
during  the  crowded  fifteen  years  of  life  that  were  then 
left  to  him.  We  can  observe  his  humble  beginnings,  his 
hesitations,  his  false  starts;  and  we  can  perceive  his  slow 
recognition  of  the  goal  which  he  might  attain.  We  can 
trace  the  steady  enrichment  of  his  method  by  which  in 
e  he  was  able  to  achieve  the  glorious  result.  As  we 
go  down  the  years  with  him,  the  man  wins  our  admira- 
tion as  much  as  the  artist;  and  we  give  him  our  sym- 
pathy, loving  him  all  the  more  for  the  enemies  he 
made. 

Then  when  the  funeral  procession  has  filed  past  in  the 
darkness  of  the  night,  we  have  in  our  hands  all  that  is  needed 
for  the  understanding  of  his  character;  and  we  find  that 
the  three-fold  explanation  of  what  he  was,  and  of  what  he 
did,  lies  in  these  things — he  was  a  born  playwright,  a 
master-craftsman  in  the  dramaturgic  art;  he  was  fiver  a 
humorist^with  the  underlying  melancholy  and  the  piercing 
insightthat  accompany  richness  of  humor;  and  he  was  a 


HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION         3 

hater  of  hyrjocrisy,  with  a  scorn  that  was  ever  burning  hot 
within  him,  when  he  beheld  pretense,  or  affectation,  or 
deceit. 

I 

Moliere  was  born  in  Paris  in  1622,  There  is  a  certain 
significance  in  the  observation  that  only  a  few  of  the  masters 
of  Latin  literature  were  natives  of  Rome  itself,  whereas  a 
host  of  the  chief  figures  of  French  literature  first  saw  the 
light  in  the  city  by  the  Seine — Ruteboeuf,  Villon,  Regnier, 
Scarron,  Boileau,  La  Bruyere,  Regnard,  Voltaire,  Beau- 
marchais,  Beranger  and  Labiche,  all  of  them  exponents  of 
characteristics  that  are  essentially  French.  The  litera- 
ture of  the  French  is  more  urban  as  well  as  more  urbane 
than  the  literature  of  the  Latins,  more  inclined  to  take  its 
color  from  the  capital.  There  is  a  special  fitness  therefore 
in  the  fact  that  Moliere,  the  most  representative  of  all 
French  writers,  was  also  born  in  Paris. 

In  the  first  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century  Paris  was 
very  unlike  the  smiling  and  embellished  city  of  to-day, 
with  its  spacious  avenues,  its  handsome  squares  and  its 
elaborate  parks.  It  was  little  better  than  any  other  more 
or  less  medieval  town,  with  its  scant  half-million  of  in- 
habitants closely  packed  within  the  ramparts  still  needful 
to  guard  against  domestic  insurgents  and  foreign  invaders. 
In  Moliere's  youth,  Richelieu  made  a  breach  in  these  walls 
to  lay  out  the  garden  of  what  is  now  the  Palais-Royal;  and 
in  the  last  years  of  Moliere's  life,  Colbert  cleared  away  the 
rest  of  these  bulwarks  to  make  the  circle  of  the  Boulevards. 
The  center  of  the  little  city  was  still  the  island  on  which 
Notre  Dame  raises  aloft  its  twin  towers.  The  Louvre  was 
separated  from  the  Tuileries  by  a  network  of  small  streets, 
as  crooked  and  as  filthy,  as  little  paved  and  ill-lighted,  as 


4  MOLIERE 

all  the  other  streets  of  the  capital  of  France.  Beyond  the 
Tuileries  there  was  open  country,  where  we  now  can  see  the 
Garden,  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  and  the  long  Champs 
Elysees.  Opposite  the  Louvre  the  Tour  de  Nesle  was  still 
standing  on  the  outskirts  of  the  town.  The  houses  were 
not  yet  numbered,  being  distinguished  by  their  separate 
signs.  Some  of  these  houses  clung  to  the  Seine,  built  out 
on  piles,  and  others  lined  the  bridges  that  crossed  the  river, 
a  fashion  which  once  obtained  in  London,  and  which  still 
survives  in  Florence. 

When  Moliere  was  born  Louis  XIII  was  king;  and  two 
years  thereafter  the  far-sighted  and  strong-willed  Richelieu 
became  his  minister,  to  begin  the  arduous  task  of  consoli- 
dating the  royal  authority,  laying  a  firm  foundation  for  the 
autocracy  of  Louis  XIV.  There  was  unceasing  conspiracy, 
often  followed  by  summary  justice.  It  was  ten  years  after 
Moliere's  birth  that  Richelieu  sent  Montmorency  to  the 
scaffold;  and  it  was  ten  years  later  that  he  put  Cinq-Mars 
to  death.  Between  these  two  executions  for  high  treason, 
Urbain  Grandier  had  been  burnt  at  the  stake  as  a  sorcerer. 
And  yet  amid  all  this  turmoil,  literature  was  flourishing 
again;  the  Marquise  de  Rambouillet  and  her  cotery  were 
striving  to  refine  the  language  as  well  as  the  manners  of  the 
time;  Corneille  was  slowly  attaining  the  fit  form  for  French 
tragedy;  and  the  French  Academy,  at  first  only  a  private  gath- 
ering of  poets  and  scholars,  was  receiving  royal  recognition. 

Moliere  was  born  only  six  years  after  Shakspere  died; 
and  Milton  was  his  older  contemporary,  outliving  him  a 
year.  Calderon  also  survived  him,  and  Lope  de  Vega  did 
not  die  until  Moliere  was  thirteen;  Cervantes  had  died 
the  same  year  as  Shakspere.  These  illustrious  figures  of 
English  and  of  Spanish  literature  seem  far  remoter  from 
us  than  Moliere;  even  though  some  of  them  outlived  him, 


HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION         5 

they  are  less  modern  than  he  is.  In  his  own  country, 
Hardy,  the  founder  of  the  modern  drama  in  France,  sur- 
vived until  Moliere  was  nine;  Corneille,  born  fourteen 
years  before  him,  lived  eleven  years  after  him;  and  Rotrou, 
born  eleven  years  earlier,  did  not  die  till  Moliere  was 
twenty-eight.  La  Fontaine  was  less  than  a  year  older  than 
Moliere,  and  Pascal  was  a  year  younger.  Mme.  de  Sevigne 
was  four  years  his  junior,  and  Bossuet  was  born  a  year  after 
the  incomparable  letter-writer.  Boileau,  always  Moliere' s 
steadfast  friend,  was  fourteen  years  younger;  and  Racine 
(whose  first  steps  in  the  theater  Moliere  was  to  encourage, 
as  he  was  to  bring  out  also  two  of  the  final  efforts  of  the 
aging  Corneille)  was  seventeen  years  his  junior.  Louis 
XIV  himself  was  born  sixteen  years  after  Moliere;  and 
his  reign  covers  that  splendid  epoch  of  French  history 
and  of  French  literature  which  extends  from  the  rule. of 
Richelieu  almost  to  the  fatal  revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes. 

II 

Moliere' s  father,  Jean  Poquelin,  was  born  in  1595.  He 
became  a  prosperous  tradesman,  an  upholsterer  and  fur- 
niture-maker; and  in  1631  he  succeeded  to  an  appoint- 
ment as  one  of  the  king's  eight  valets  de  chambre  tapissiers, 
to  whom  was  committed  the  care  of  all  the  royal  furniture 
and  furnishings.  Two  of  these  officials  were  in  constant 
attendance,  serving  in  their  turn  for  a  quarter  of  the  year, 
whether  the  monarch  was  residing  in  one  of  his  palaces  or 
going  on  a  journey  or  to  a  campaign.  These  appointments 
could  be  held  only  by  tradesmen  of  character  and  promi- 
nence; they  conferred  upon  the  holders  the  right  to  call 
themselves  knights;  and  like  most  of  the  other  offices  in  the 
royal  household  they  could  be  sold  or  transferred  by  con- 


6  MOLIERE 

tract.  It  was  in  1621  that  Jean  Poquelin  married  Marie 
Cresse,  the  daughter  of  another  upholsterer  and  furniture- 
maker.  The  husband  took  his  bride  to  his  house  in  the 
rue  St.  Honore  on  the  corner  of  the  rue  des  Vieilles-Etuves 
— a  house  destroyed  only  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  This  dwelling,  distinguished  by  a  corner-post 
carved  with  climbing  monkeys,  stood  on  the  site  of  the 
building  numbered  76,  which  now  bears  a  commemorative 
panel.  Like  most  tradesmen  in  those  days,  Moliere's 
father  lived  over  his  shop;  and  there  in  the  first  half  of 
January,  1622,  the  eldest  son  was  born.  The  exact  date  is 
uncertain,  but  the  child  was  baptized  on  January  15, 
probably  only  a  day  or  two  at  most  after  his  birth.  His 
paternal  grandfather  was  his  godfather. 

Business  was  thriving  and  the  household  was  well-to-do. 
The  bride  had  brought  a  comfortable  dowry.  Of  her 
character  we  know  little,  except  that  she  possessed  a  Bible 
and  a  Plutarch.  She  bore  five  other  children,  of  whom 
three  survived  her — a  second  son,  also  christened  Jean, 
a  third  named  Nicholas,  and  a  daughter  Madeleine,  who 
was  only  five  years  old  when  the  mother  died,  in  1633. 
The  inventory  taken  at  her  death  catalogues  not  only  her 
clothing,  her  jewelry  and  her  household  linen,  but  also  the 
abundant  stock  on  hand  in  the  shop.  Almost  exactly  a  year 
after  her  death  her  husband  remarried,  only  to  lose  his 
second  wife  three  years  later,  after  she  had  borne  him  two 
more  daughters,  half-sisters  of  the  future  Moliere.  These 
brothers  and  sisters  seem  to  have  played  small  parts  in  the 
poet's  later  life,  after  he  broke  away  from  his  family  and 
went  on  the  stage.  From  his  mother  he  inherited  five 
thousand  livres,  a  goodly  sum  in  those  days;  and  this  is 
proof  that  trade  had  been  satisfactory  during  the  eleven 
years  of  her  married  life. 


HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION         7 

In  the  same  year  that  he  remarried,  Moliere' s  father 
bought  a  house  in  the  colonnade  of  the  market,  the  Piliers 
des  Halles,  near  the  rue  de  la  Reale  (now  the  rue  du  Pont- 
neuf).  Moliere  was  only  eleven  years  old  when  he  lost  his 
mother  (as  Voltaire  was  only  seven  when  the  same  mis- 
fortune befell  him);  and  it  might  be  interesting  to  speculate 
on  the  effect  this  loss  may  have  had  upon  the  development 
of  his  character, — perhaps  we  can  find  here  one  reason 
why  there  is  in  his  plays  a  notable  absence  of  maternal  love. 
He  was  only  twelve  when  his  father  remarried  and  only 
fifteen  when  his  stepmother  died;  here  again  we  might 
question  whether  this  second  marriage  of  his  father  had 
any  significant  influence  upon  Moliere's  development. 
There  is  danger  always  in  trying  to  cast  light  on  the  life  of 
a  dramatist  by  the  characters  and  by  the  situations  we  may 
find  in  his  plays;  and  in  this  case  the  attempt  is  impossible, 
since  Moliere  has  twice  introduced  a  stepmother,  once  in 
'Tartuffe,'  where  she  is  on  the  best  of  terms  with  her  step- 
children, once  again  in  the  'Malade  Imaginaire/  where 
she  is  a  self-seeking  and  hypocritical  intriguer. 

It  was  not  until  after  the  death  of  his  stepmother  that 
he  was  sent  to  school.  He  was  about  fifteen;  and  in  all 
probability  he  had  already  served  his  apprenticeship  to 
his  father's  trade,  to  which  he  was  expected  to  succeed. 
Perhaps  even  at  that  early  age  the  lad's  thoughts  were 
beginning  to  turn  to  the  theater;  at  least  there  is  a  legend 
that  his  maternal  grandfather,  Cresse,  who  survived  until 
Moliere  was  sixteen,  had  delighted  in  taking  the  boy  to  see 
farce-actors  of  the  time.  It  may  be  noted  that  the  most 
amusing  of  them  all,  Tabarin,  died  only  in  1633  and  that 
another,  Turlupin,  lived  until  1637.  What  is  certain  is 
that  Moliere's  youth  was  passed  in  comfortable  circum- 
stances, and  that  his  future  seemed  to  be  assured.  His 


8  MOLIERE 

prosperous  father  was  ready  to  give  him  the  best  possible 
education,  to  fit  him  to  carry  on  the  business  and  to  acquit 
himself  well  in  the  honorable  position  near  the  person  of 
the  king.  In  1637,  six  years  after  he  had  acquired  the  title 
of  valet  de  chambre  tapissier  du  rot,  the  elder  Poquelin 
caused  the  reversion  to  be  confirmed  to  his  son.  A  few 
months  earlier  he  had  sent  the  lad  to  the  foremost  school 
then  existing  in  Paris,  the  College  de  Clermont  (now  called 
the  Lycee  Louis-le-Grand),  where  he  was  to  study  for  the 
next  four  or  five  years.  The  year  when  Moliere  probably 
entered  the  College  de  Clermont — 1636 — was  the  year 
in  which  Richelieu  ceded  to  Louis  XIII  the  sumptuous 
edifice  now  known  as  the  Palais-Royal;  it  was  the  year  in 
which  Corneille  produced  his  earliest  masterpiece,  the 
'Cid,J  which  marked  the  dawn  of  a  new  day  in  the  French 
drama;  and  it  was  also  the  year  in  which  Descartes  was 
privileged  to  publish  in  Holland  his  '  Discourse  on  Method/ 
the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  philosophy. 

Ill 

The  College  de  Clermont  was  managed  by  the  Jesuits; 
and  Moliere — like  Calderon  and  Tasso,  like  Corneille  and 
Goldoni,  like  Descartes'  and  Montesquieu,  BuflFon  and 
Voltaire — owed  his  training  to  those  devoted  instructors  of 
youth.  Their  rigid  program  of  studies,  the  famous  ratio 
studioruniy  had  been  finally  promulgated  in  1599,  less  than 
a  quarter  of  a  century  before  Moliere  was  born;  and  it  was 
in  1622,  the  year' of  Moliere' s  birth,  that  Ignatius  Loyola 
and  Francis  Xavier  had  been  canonized.  The  school  had 
been  flourishing  in  the  sixteenth  century  until  the  Jesuits 
were  expelled  from  France,  in  1574.  They  were  allowed 
to  return  only  in  1603;  and  the  school  was  not  reopened 


HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION         9 

until  1618.  The  corner-stone  of  a  new  building  was  laid  in 
1628  and  the  edifice  was  completed  in  1632,  about  four 
years  before  Moliere  first  took  his  place  on  its  benches. 
The  College  had  quickly  regained  its  prosperity;  and  it 
soon  came  to  have  two  or  three  thousand  scholars  in 
attendance. 

Instruction  was  given  generally  in  Latin,  although  there 
was  also  careful  training  in  the  use  of  French.  The  pupils 
were  expected  to  speak  the  Roman  tongue  even  in  conversa- 
tion with  each  other.  The  teaching  was  oral  and  tutorial; 
and  in  the  lower  classes  there  was  but  little  writing.  Only 
in  the  higher  classes  were  the  pupils  instructed  in  com- 
position. The  aim  was  first  solidity  of  knowledge,  and 
second  flexibility  of  style, — although  it  has  been  charged 
that  the  former  was  often  sacrificed  to  the  latter.  Special 
attention  was  paid  to  grammar  and  rhetoric,  to  the  humani- 
ties and  to  philosophy;  the  masters  held  up  as  models 
were  Aristotle,  Cicero  and  Quintilian.  Verbal  dexterity 
was  highly  esteemed;  and  the  older  students  vied  with  the 
instructors  in  the  effort  to  achieve  elegance  and  euphony. 
Probably  there  was  a  tendency  toward  phrase-making  and 
to  the  employment  of  mellifluous  words  for  their  own  sake; 
but  even  this  was  a  valuable  gymnastic.  The  best  pupils 
were  made  masters  of  the  Latin  language;  and  they  studied 
the  chief  works  of  the  leading  Latin  authors.  The  severe 
training  in  philosophy,  as  that  was  then  understood,  could 
not  but  broaden  the  mind  and  make  its  action  swifter  and 
suppler. 

The  College  de  Clermont  had  a  teaching  staff  of  nearly 
three  hundred;  and  it  received  some  four  hundred  boarders, 
including  many  boys  of  the  best  blood  in  France.  The 
Prince  of  Conti,  for  example,  the  younger  brother  of  the 
great  Conde,  was  entered  two  years  after  Moliere.  We  do 


io  MOLIERE 

not  know  whether  Moliere  was  only  a  day-scholar  or 
whether  he  lived  in  one  of  the  boarding-houses  for  pupils, 
of  which  there  were  several,  more  or  less  under  the  control 
of  the  school  authorities;  probably  he  resided  at  home,  as 
the  Jesuit  institution,  although  it  was  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Seine,  was  less  than  a  mile  from  his  father's  house. 
Nor  do  we  know  with  certainty  how  long  he  was  a  pupil  of 
the  Jesuits  or  exactly  what  his  studies  were.  Probably  he 
remained  at  college  for  four  or  five  years  at  least,  until  he 
was  eighteen  or  nineteen.  His  earliest  biographer,  La 
Grange,  in  the  brief  notice  prefixed  to  the  first  edition  of 
his  collected  plays,  asserted  that  "the  success  of  his  studies 
was  what  might  have  been  expected  from  a  genius  as  happy 
as  his,"  and  also  that  "if  he  was  a  good  humanist,  he  did 
even  better  in  philosophy."  The  instruction  in  philosophy 
was  based  on  the  'Logic/  the  'Ethics'  and  the  'Physics' 
of  Aristotle  and  on  the  'Institutes'  of  Porphyry.  There 
is  in  Moliere's  comedies  abundant  evidence  of  his  thorough 
training  in  the  peripatetic  philosophy;  he  became  master 
not  only  of  its  vocabulary  but  also  of  its  modes  of  thought. 
Equally  obvious  is  his  acquaintance  with  the  plays  of 
Plautus  and  Terence.  "The  inclination  he  had  for 
poetry,"  so  La  Grange  declared,  "made  him  apply  himself 
particularly  to  the  poets;  and  he  possessed  them  perfectly." 
By  the  poets,  the  biographer  meant,  in  all  likelihood,  the 
the  Latin  poets  chiefly,  since  Moliere's  acquaintance  with 
Greek  is  less  apparent.  It  was  perhaps  while  he  was  still 
on  the  benches  of  the  College  de  Clermont  that  he  un- 
dertook a  translation  of  Lucretius,  a  few  lines  of  which  he 
utilized  in  the  'Misanthrope/  But  we  do  not  know  how 
far  he  carried  this  task  and  whether  it  was  ever  more 
than  the  project  of  an  ambitious  schoolboy — although 
another  contemporary  translator  of  Lucretius  informs  us 


HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION       n 

that  Moliere  retained  his  interest  in  this  undertaking,  even 
in  the  busy  years  of  his  theatrical  management,  revising 
his  translation  constantly  and  trying  certain  passages  in 
several  ways.  There  is  no  doubt  that  he  found  in  the 
Roman  poet  a  kindred  soul  and  that  his  own  attitude 
toward  the  insistent  problems  of  life  is  not  unlike  that  of 
Lucretius.  It  may  be  noted  as  an  interesting  coincidence 
that  Moliere's  younger  contemporary,  Dryden,  had  also  a 
great  liking  for  the  austere  Latin  poet. 

What  is  beyond  all  question  also  is  that  Moliere's  tend- 
ency toward  the  theater,  if  it  had  already  shown  itself, 
would  not  have  been  discouraged  by  the  education  he  re- 
ceived. The  Jesuits  had  always  trained  their  pupils  in 
declamation  and  even  in  acting.  The  rules  required  the 
annual  performance  of  a  tragedy  written  by  the  professor 
of  poetry,  accompanied  by  a  lighter  piece  written  by  the 
professor  of  rhetoric.  These  plays,  tragic  and  comic,  were 
in  Latin,  of  course;  and  they  were  intended  to  give  the 
students  experience  and  facility  in  the  oral  use  of  that 
tongue.  The  rules  also  forbade  female  characters  and  any 
love-interest  whatsoever;  and  they  prescribed  subjects 
taken  from  the  scriptures  or  from  the  annals  of  the  church. 
Sometimes  a  play  of  Plautus  was  substituted  for  the  origi- 
nal effort  of  a  professor,  more  often  a  play  of  Terence. 
Although  these  comedies  might  be  modified  to  suit  a 
school-performance,  the  prohibition  of  female  characters 
was  not  always  enforced. 

A  Latin  tragedy  was  acted  in  1641  before  Richelieu  in 
his  palace  by  the  noble  pupils  of  the  Jesuits,  the  Prince 
de  Conti  being  one  of  the  performers.  In  the  College 
itself  the  performances  were  given  in  a  large  court  between 
three  buildings,  a  stage  being  erected  at  one  end  and  three 
galleries  at  the  other.  An  awning  covered  the  court;  and 


12  MOLIERE 

the  windows  of  the  adjoining  buildings  served  as  private 
boxes.  Admission  tickets  could  be  purchased;  and  the 
performances  were  evidently  much  relished  by  fashionable 
society.  Probably  the  more  serious  Latin  plays  were  not 
as  attractive  as  the  ballets  which  often  accompanied  them 
and  in  which  the  Jesuits  took  special  pride.  These  ballets 
were  not  unlike  the  English  masques  which  Ben  Jonson 
and  Inigo  Jones  devised  for  the  delight  of  King  James  and 
his  consort.  They  represented  an  allegoric  or  mythologic 
theme;  and  they  did  not  demand  the  terpsichorean  agility 
which  we  now  associate  with  the  idea  of  the  ballet.  Yet 
they  called  for  not  a  little  formal  dancing,  and  the  Jesuits 
paid  great  attention  to  this  part  of  their  educational  scheme. 
After  the  Opera  had  been  established  by  Louis  XIV,  the 
authorities  of  the  College  de  Clermont  engaged  its  ballet- 
masters  to  instruct  their  pupils  and  to  take  charge  of  the 
ballets  given  in  the  school. 

IV 

We  have  no  record  that  Moliere  took  part  either  in  the 
ballets  of  the  Jesuits  or  in  their  Latin  comedies  and  trage- 
dies; but  it  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  he  acted  in  some 
of  the  performances  which  were  given  while  he  was  a 
student.  It  is  also  likely  that  while  he  was  still  a  pupil  of 
the  Jesuits  he  formed  his  friendship  with  a  group  of  clever 
young  fellows,  with  some  of  whom  he  was  to  be  closely  knit 
for  the  rest  of  his  life.  One  of  these  was  the  eccentric  poet, 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac.  Another  was  Bernier,  the  future 
traveler,  afterward  the  physician  of  an  Indian  king.  And 
a  third  was  the  gay  good-liver  Chapelle,  who  went  through 
life  lightly  and  carelessly.  Even  in  their  youth  they  were 
all  frank  and  independent,  in  this  respect  fit  companions 


HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION        13 

for  Moliere;  and,  like  him,  they  kept  up  to  the  end  the 
habit  of  doing  their  own  thinking. 

Cyrano  de  Bergerac  preserved  his  outspoken  individua- 
lity as  long  as  he  lived;  and  Bernier,  on  his  return  from  his 
far  voyages,  had  the  courage  to  answer  a  question  of  Louis 
XIV  as  to  the  happiest  country  he  had  visited  with  the  un- 
expected assertion  that  it  was  Switzerland.  Chapelle  was 
the  one  whose  friendship  with  Moliere  seems  to  have  been 
most  intimate;  he  was  the  illegitimate  son  of  Lullier,  the 
financier,  who  finally  adopted  him  formally.  Lullier,  as 
it  happened,  was  a  friend  of  Gassendi,  and  he  invited  that 
philosopher  to  stay  with  him  in  Paris  in  1641 — the  year 
when  Moliere  was  probably  finishing  his  studies  at  the 
College  de  Clermont  and  when  he  had  probably  already 
formed  the  acquaintance  of  Chapelle. 

Gassendi  was  a  man  of  wide  rather  than  deep  learning. 
He  was  a  correspondent  of  Galileo  and  of  Kepler.  In- 
terested in  every  branch  of  science,  he  taught  philosophy 
at  one  time  and  at  another  mathematics.  Although  always 
circumspect  and  tactful  he  was  no  respecter  of  tradition  or 
of  authority,  being  always  more  or  less  in  advance  of  his 
time;  and  to  many,  no  doubt,  he  seemed  an  iconoclast. 
The  discoveries  of  Copernicus,  Galileo  and  Kepler  had 
convinced  him  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  Ptolemaic  system, 
still  accepted  absolutely,  not  only  by  the  Jesuits  but  by 
nearly  all  who  were  then  charged  with  the  instruction  of 
youth.  He  had  an  intense  admiration  for  Lucretius,  and 
he  was  then  at  work  on  his  'Apology  for  Epicurus/  He 
brought  forward  again  the  Epicurean  theory  of  the  con- 
stitution of  matter,  which  has  become  the  basis  of  modern 
physics.  In  return  for  Lullier' s  hospitality  he  seems  to 
have  given  private  instruction  to  Chapelle  and  to  Chapelle' s 
young  comrades;  and  to  these  lessons,  which  could  not 


i4  MOLIERE 

fail  to  be  suggestive  and  stimulating,  Moliere  was  admitted 
(so  we  are  informed  by  his  second  biographer,  Grimarest). 
How  formal  this  teaching  may  have  been  we  do  not  know, 
or  whether  it  amounted  to  more  than  the  privilege  of 
listening  to  the  philosopher's  talk.  Possibly  it  was  Gas- 
sendi  who  first  awakened  Moliere's  interest  in  Lucretius. 
Possibly,  also,  Gassendi's  habit  of  girding  at  the  medical 
practitioners  may  have  called  Moliere's  attention  to  the 
pretentious  arrogance  of  the  doctors  of  his  day.  Certainly, 
the  association  with  Gassendi  could  but  exert  a  broaden- 
ing influence  upon  the  young  pupil  of  the  Jesuit  fathers, 
opening  his  eyes  to  many  things  that  the  tutors  of  the 
College  de  Clermont  would  surely  have  kept  from  him. 
This  must  have  been  a  critical  epoch  in  his  career,  when 
he  was  finishing  his  studies  with  the  Jesuits  and  at  the 
same  time  profiting  by  the  free  and  easy  conversation  of  his 
ardent  young  friends,  who  were  detached  from  prejudice 
and  encouraged  to  bold  speculation  by  the  guidance  of  the 
unpedantic  Gassendi. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  it  was  then  Moliere  felt  for  the 
first  time  the  attraction  of  the  theater  and  that  he  helped 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac  to  sketch  out  one  or  more  of  the  farces 
the  ingenious  Gascon  was  later  to  bring  out  on  the  stage; 
and  it  is  a  fact  that  from  one  of  these  farces  Moliere  after- 
ward took  over  one  episode  in  the  'Fourberies  de  Scapin,' 
justifying  his  borrowing  with  the  famous  phrase,  "I  take 
my  own  where  I  find  it." 


But  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  at  this  time,  1641, 
Moliere  had  decided  to  write  plays  for  a  living  or  to  go  on 
the  stage  as  an  actor.  The  elder  Poquelin  was  then  a 
thriving  tradesman;  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  re- 


HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION        15 

version  of  his  post  as  valet  de  chamlre  tapisster  had  been 
confirmed  to  his  son,  he  was  apparently  ambitious  to  have 
his  first-born  rise  out  of  the  burgher  class  and  become  a 
member  of  one  of  the  learned  professions.  For  medicine, 
Moliere  certainly  had  no  liking.  For  theology,  his  call 
seems  equally  doubtful;  and  yet  his  gossiping  contempo- 
rary, Tallement  des  Reaux,  has  asserted  that  Moliere 
was  for  a  season  a  student  at  the  Sorbonne,  the  training- 
school  for  the  church.  It  is  unfortunate  that,  although 
our  information  as  to  the  later  and  more  important  years 
of  Moliere' s  life  is  abundant  and  exact,  there  are  still  many 
obscure  points  in  the  history  of  his  youth.  Tallemant  is 
not  always  a  trustworthy  witness,  and  it  is  probable  that  he 
blunders  in  making  this  assertion.  Yet  there  is  undeniable 
piquancy  in  the  possibility  that  the  future  author  of  'Tar- 
tuffe'  may  have  begun  to  prepare  himself  for  the  church, 
even  if  he  speedily  changed  his  mind  and  gave  up  the 
uncongenial  and  inappropriate  task. 

Although  it  remains  unlikely  that  Moliere  ever  seriously 
undertook  the  study  of  theology,  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  he  did  begin  the  study  of  law  and  even  that  he  may 
have  been  admitted  to  the  bar.  In  those  days,  as  in  our 
own  time,  the  law  was  a  profession  that  might  lead  to  many 
a  post  of  honor;  and  there  is  no  improbability  in  the  sug- 
gestion that  Moliere  may  never  have  intended  to  practise 
and  that  he  mastered  the  principles  of  law  only  as  a  prepa- 
ration for  some  other  calling.  We  have  no  record  of  his 
matriculation  at  any  law-school  or  of  his  admission  to  the 
bar;  and  yet  his  legal  studies  may  be  considered  as  beyond 
dispute.  They  are  affirmed  both  by  La  Grange  and 
Grimarest;  and  the  latter  declared  that  Moliere's  family 
was  the  authority  for  the  assertion.  The  statement  has 
been  made  that  Moliere  took  his  law  degree  at  Orleans, 


16  MOLIERE 

convoyed  there  by  his  father.  At  that  time  and  in  that 
place  degrees  were  bestowed  very  liberally;  and  to  those 
who  were  ready  to  pay  the  fees  the  stated  residence  was 
rarely  insisted  upon.  The  applicant  was  required  only  to 
maintain  a  thesis,  upon  a  topic  of  his  own  choice;  and  even 
this  formality  might  be  filled  for  him  by  some  good-natured 
and  well-equipped  friend.  The.  ease  with  which  a  license 
might  be  obtained  is  amusingly  described  in  the  memoirs  of 
Charles  Perrault,  who  passed  the  examination  at  Orleans 
late  on  the  evening  of  his  arrival;  this  was  in  1651,  ten 
years  after  Moliere  is  believed  to  have  been  admitted  as  a 
licentiate  in  law;  and  from  Perrault's  account  it  would 
seem  that  the  diploma  was  practically  sold  to  any  appli- 
cant who  was  ready  with  the  cash. 

Additional  evidence  in  favor  of  Moliere's  having  studied 
the  intricacies  of  the  law  may  be  found  abundantly  in 
his  plays,  in  which  he  frequently  employs  legal  technical- 
ities, and  in  which  he  reveals  his  familiarity  not  only  with 
the  vocabulary  of  the  courts  but  with  their  procedure  also. 
His  acquaintance  with  the  principles  and  the  practice  of 
jurisprudence  is  both  deeper  and  more  exact  than  Shak- 
spere's.  The  English  dramatist  dealt  with  law  very  freely 
indeed,  bending  it  to  his  bidding,  in  accord  with  the  neces- 
sities of  the  story  he  was  handling  and  never  hesitating 
to  make  use  of  quibbles,  which  a  real  court  would  have  been 
very  unlikely  to  countenance.  The  French  dramatist 
^/thought  in  lawyer-like  fashion  and  he  took  no  liberties 

with  code  or  with  custom. 

/  It  must  be  noted,  however,  that  the  evidence  drawn 
from  in  Moliere's  comedies  does  not  carry  as  much  weight 
as  it  might  if  he  had  shown  his  technical  knowledge  only 
in  dealing  with  legal  questions,  since  a  little  study  makes  it 
clear  that  he  is  almost  equally  expert  in  his  use  of  the  ter- 


HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION        17 

minology  of  the  other  sciences,  philosophy,  for  one,  and 
medicine,  for  another.  Apparently  he  took  pride  in  the 
precision  of  the  technical  terms  he  put  into  the  mouths  of 
his  characters,  making  it  a  matter  of  conscience  to  get  the 
best  professional  advice,  whenever  he  had  to  deal  with  an 
art  or  a  science  that  he  did  not  himself  possess. 

VI 

If  Moliere  received  a  law  diploma  at  Orleans — or  at 
Bourges,  which  has  also  been  mentioned  as  the  university 
where  he  made  his  legal  studies — this  must  have  been  in 

1641,  after  he  had  left  the  College  de  Clermont.     And  in 

1642,  there  was  a  tragic  event  in  the  history  of  France  of 
which  Moliere  may  have  been  a  witness.     In  January, 
Louis  XIII  set  out  on  a  journey  to  the  south  of  France, 
from  which  he  did  not  return  until  late  in  July.     The  king's 
favorite,  Cinq-Mars,  was  then  engaged  in  a  conspiracy  to 
overthrow   Richelieu;    and   in   this  he   had  enlisted  the 
king's  brother,  Gaston  d'Orleans.     He  had  also  a  secret 
treaty  with  Spain,  which  pledged  him  the  aid  of  a  Spanish 
army.     The  cardinal  was  fully  informed  of  the  plot,  but  he 
bided  his  time  until  he  could  put  into  the  king's  hands  a 
copy  of  the  treaty  which  proved  the  treachery  of  the  favor- 
ite.    It  was  at  Narbonne  on  May  twelfth  that  Cinq-Mars 
was  suddenly  arrested,  to  be  executed  exactly  four  months 
thereafter. 

In  all  the  travels  of  the  king  there  were  in  attendance  on 
his  person  two  of  the  eight  valets  de  chamlres  tapissiers, 
whose  duty  it  was  to  see  to  the  comfort  of  the  monarch 
wherever  he  might  tarry.  The  quarterly  term  of  service 
of  Moliere's  father  extended  from  the  beginning  of  April 
to  the  end  of  June;  it  was  during  these  three  months 


i8  MOLIERE 

that  the  arrest  of  Cinq-Mars  took  place.  A  valet  de  cham- 
bre  tapis sier  had  the  privilege  of  substitution ;  he  could 
get  one  of  his  colleagues  to  take  his  place.  He  could  also 
send  in  his  stead  his  future  successor,  the  possessor  of  the 
survivorship  of  the  post.  In  those  days  such  a  journey  on 
such  a  duty  was  fatiguing;  and  a  prolonged  absence  from 
the  shop  at  home  might  be  very  inconvenient.  Moliere' s 
father,  who  was  getting  on  in  years  and  who  had  a  fam- 
ily of  motherless  children,  may  have  had  good  reason  to 
delegate  his  son  instead  of  going  himself;  and  he  may  well 
have  thought  that  this  early  association  with  the  sovereign 
could  not  but  be  advantageous  to  a  well-educated  young 
fellow  of  twenty.  Furthermore,  documents  have  been  dis- 
covered which  prove  that  the  elder  Poquelin  was  actually 
in  Paris  on  the  third  of  July;  as  his  term  of  service 
did  not  come  to  an  end  until  the  first  of  that  month  he 
could  not  have  returned  to  the  capital  from  Lyons  (where 
the  king  then  was)  in  two  days. 

Grimarest  is  formal  in  his  assertion  that  Moliere  "made 
the  Narbonne  journey  in  the  train  of  the  king."  In  April, 
and  again  in  June,  Louis  XIII  spent  the  night  in  the 
little  town  of  Sigean,  where  the  members  of  his  household 
were  lodged  with  a  wealthy  citizen  named  Dufort;  and 
later  in  Moliere's  career  we  find  him  on  friendly  terms  with 
this  Dufort;  to  whom  he  was  even  under  pecuniary  obliga- 
tions— a  fact  which  possibly  points  to  an  earlier  meeting. 
One  narrator  of  the  event  immediately  preceding  the  arrest 
of  Cinq-Mars  has  told  us  that  the  frightened  conspirator 
was  hidden  for  a  little  while  in  a  dark  closet  by  a  "young 
valet  de  chambre  of  the  king."  Of  course,  we  have  no  right 
to  accept  this  uncorroborated  statement  and  to  believe  that 
this  young  valet  de  chambre,  moved  by  sudden  pity  for  a 
man  in  danger  of  his  life,  was  Moliere.  But  a  weighing  of 


HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  EDUCATION       19 

all  the  evidence  leads  to  the  belief  that  in  all  probability 
Moliere  was  a  member  of  the  king's  household  when 
Richelieu  unmasked  the  conspiracy.  It  may  be  noted  also 
that  in  Alfred  de  Vigny's  historical  novel,  '  Cinq-Mars  '- 
which  seemingly  served  as  the  basis  of  Lord  Lytton's  long 
popular  play,  *  Richelieu' — the  poet  saw  fit  to  introduce 
as  minor  characters  in  an  earlier  scene  of  the  story  not 
only  Moliere,  but  also  Milton,  then  returning  home  from 
a  visit  to  Italy. 

VII 

Whether  Moliere  did  or  did  not  act  as  his  father's 
substitute  in  the  spring  of  1642  and  make  the  voyage  to 
Narbonne  in  the  train  of  the  king,  we  know  that  he  did  not 
much  longer  aspire  to  the  succession  to  his  father's  business. 
It  was  at  that  time,  just  as  he  was  about  to  attain  to  man's 
estate,  that  he  felt  the  lure  of  the  theater  to  be  irresistible 
and  that  he  decided  to  go  on  the  stage.  For  a  little  while 
after  the  execution  of  Cinq-Mars,  Moliere  may  have  aided 
his  father  in  the  shop,  or  he  may  even  have  begun  to  practise 
as  a  lawyer;  but  not  for  long  did  he  engage  in  these  tasks 
which  were  becoming  more  and  more  uncongenial.  It 
was  in  the  first  month  of  1643,  wnen  ne  was  just  turned 
twenty-one,  that  his  intention  of  giving  up  his  father's 
trade  and  of  striking  out  for  himself  was  made  manifest  by 
a  formal  act.  He  ceded  back  to  his  father  the  right  to  dis- 
pose of  the  survivorship  of  the  royal  appointment  as  valet 
de  chamlre  tapissler.  And  in  July,  only  six  months  later, 
another  formal  act  proves  that  he  had  chosen  his  new 
calling;  he  enrolled  himself  in  a  little  band  of  actors.  It 
cannot  be  said  that  he  gave  up  law  for  literature,  as  Cor- 
neille  had  done  and  as  Boileau  was  to  do,  since  he  seems 


20  MOLIERE 

in  these  years  of  his  youth  to  have  had  no  ambition  for 
authorship. 

His  vocation  may  have  been  the  delayed  result  of  the 
boyish  visits  made  with  his  grandfather  to  the  farce-actors 
of  his  youth.  It  may  have  been  stimulated  by  the  tragedies 
and  comedies  and  ballets  of  his  school-days.  It  may  have 
been  intensified  by  contact  with  the  strollin^r^rformers 
who  enlivened  the  annual  Fair  of  St.  Germain,  where  his 
father  always  opened  a  branch  shop  for  a  few  weeks  in 
every  year.  It  may  have  been  heightened  by  admiration 
for  the  brisk  and  adroit  Italianjzomedians  then  appearing 
in  Paris,  under  the  leadership  of  Tibero  Fiorelli,  the  famous 
Scaramouche  (for  whose  portrait  La  Fontaine  was  later  to 
rime  a  quatrain,  declaring  that  nature  had  been  his  teacher 
as  he  had  been  Moliere's).  It  may  have  been  nourished 
by  attendance  at  the  two  theaters  then  established  in  Paris, 
the  Hot^Ljie^Bourgogne  and  its  younger  rival,  the  play- 
house in  the  Ma^rais.  It  may  have  been  encouraged  by  the 
royal  edict  of  two  years  earlier,  relieving  actors  from  the 
outlawry  which  had  oppressed  them  for  years.  It  may 
have  been  due  in  some  measure  to  the  emulation  excited 
by  the  growing  fame  of  Corneille,  who  had  produced  in 
1640  'Cinna,'  'Horace'  and  'Polyeucte/  and  in  1642  the 
'Menteur,'  the  most  popular  of  his  comedies.  It  may 
even  have  had  a  simpler  cause,  a  love  affair  with  an 
actress,  Madeleine  Bejart,  with  whom  he  was  to  be  closely 
associated  for  more  than  a  score  of  years.  Whatever 
might  be  the  origin  of  the  call,  he  heard  it  clearly  and  he 
obeyed.  It  was  in  1643  that  he  cast  in  his  lot  with  the 
company  of  players  of  which  Madeleine  Bejart  was  the 
chief,  and  that  he  entered  on  the  first  stage  of  the  career 
which  was  to  make  him  the  best  comic  actor  of  his  time 
and  the  foremost  comic  dramatist  of  all  time. 


HIS   FAMILY  AND   HIS   EDUCATION      21 

For  this  career  he  was  better  fitted  than  the  majority  of 
the  ambitious  young  fellows  who  are  always  ready  to  knock 
at  the  stage-door,  believing  it  to  be  the  portal  of  the  temple 
of  fortune.  He  had  grown  to  manhood  in  a  comfortable 
home  and  he  had  received  an  excellent  education.  The 
circumstances  of  his  youth  were  not  unlike  Shakspere's; 
but  his  schooling  had  been  far  more  thorough,  and  by  his 
training  he  was  better  equipped  for  literature. 

His  turning  to  the  theater  in  his  early  manhood  may  have 
been  due  to  a  woman,  as  Shakspere's  may  have  been, 
with  the  significant  difference  that  Moliere  was  following  a 
woman  older  than  himself  with  whom  he  may  have  fallen 
in  love,  and  that  Shakspere  was  possibly  seeking  rather  to 
get  away  from  a  woman  older  than  himself  whom  he  had 
married.  Like  Shakspere,  once  more,  Moliere  was  to 
spend  years  in  obscure  struggle,  wrestling  with  poverty  and 
serving  an  arduous  apprenticeship  to  a  difficult  art.  Prob- 
ably Moliere' s  years  of  youthful  striving  were  even  less 
pleasant  than  Shakspere's;  and  certainly  his  period  of 
probation  lasted  longer. 


CHAPTER  II 
HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  AND  HIS  WANDERINGS 

I 

IT  was  soon  after  he  became  a  professional  actor  that 
Jean  Baptiste  Poquelin  followed  the  practice  of  the  time 
and  took  a  stage-name.  Why  he  chose  to  call  himself 
Moliere  we  do  not  know;  and  Grimarest  asserted  that  he 
would  not  explain  the  reason  for  this  choice  "even  to  his 
best  friends."  The  name,  it  may  be  noted,  was  borne  by 
at  least  one  other  person  more  or  less  connected  with  the 
theater — a  musician  of  little  importance. 

In  the  beginning,  for  a  brief  season,  Moliere  seems  to 
have  acted  only  as  an  amateur,  if  we  may  believe  the  ac- 
count Grimarest  has  given  us.  "It  was  often  the  custom 
at  that  time,"  so  this  biographer  asserted,  "for  a  group  of 
friends  to  act  plays.  A  few  citizens  of  Paris  made  up  a 
company  to  which  Moliere  belonged.  They  acted  several 
times  for  their  own  amusement.  Then  having  sufficiently 
enjoyed  themselves,  and  convinced  that  they  were  good 
actors,  they  determined  to  make  money  by  their  perfor- 
mances." And  therefore  they  resolved  to  establish  them- 
selves in  a  tennis-court  owned  by  a  man  named  Metayer, 
and  situated  near  the  Porte  de  Nesle. 

Just  as  the  strolling  actors  in  England  in  Shakspere's 
youth  were  wont  to  perform  in  the  court-yard  of  an  inn, 
building  out  a  stage  from  under  the  rear  gallery,  so  the 
strolling  actors  in  France  in  Moliere' s  youth  were  accus- 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  23 

tomed  to  perform  in  a  tennis-court,  which  could  be  trans- 
formed into  an  acceptable  theater  by  the  erection  of  a 
shallow  stage  at  one  end.  Tennis-courts  were  admirably 
adapted  for  theatrical  use;  they  were  weather-tight  halls, 
generally  a  little  more  than  a  hundred  feet  long  and  a  little 
less  than  forty  feet  wide.  They  had  galleries  which  could 
be  divided  into  boxes  for  the  ladies,  for  whose  use  there 
were  sometimes  erected  a  few  tiers  of  seats  at  the  back  of 
the  hall.  The  main  body  of  male  spectators  stood  on  the 
open  floor;  and  the  stage  was  raised  breast-high,  often  pro- 
tected by  a  stout  balustrade  across  the  front.  A  few  of  the 
better  sort  of  playgoers  were  accommodated  with  seats  on 
the  stage  itself — a  device  for  increasing  the  receipts  of  the 
performance  which  had  first  been  employed  in  France 
in  consequence  of  the  overwhelming  popularity  of  Cor- 
neille's  'Cid,'  and  which  had  its  equivalent  also  in  the 
English  theater  in  Shakspere's  time.  The  space  left  for 
the  actors  must  have  been  unduly  confined  whenever  there 
chanced  to  be  a  rush  to  see  a  new  play.  Often  there  was 
no  scenery,  but  only  a  few  hangings  at  the  back  and  sides; 
and  it  was  by  parting  the  openings  in  these  curtains  that  the 
actors  made  their  entrances  and  their  exits.  The  stage  was 
ill-lighted  by  a  few  candles  placed  in  sconces  against  the 
hangings  and  also  on  rude  wooden  chandeliers  suspended 
over  the  front  of  the  stage  above  the  heads  of  the  actors. 
When  performances  could  be  given  under  these  primitive 
conditions  it  did  not  take  long  to  transform  a  tennis-court 
into  a  theater;  and  the  list  of  these  transformations  is  end- 
less. Indeed,  so  convenient  was  this  method  of  making 
a  playhouse  that  the  practice  persisted  in  France  well  into 
the  nineteenth  century,  as  late  as  the  reign  of  Louis  Phi- 
lippe, when  the  tennis-court  in  the  palace  of  Compiegne 
was  made  available  for  theatrical  performances. 


24  MOLIERE 

When  the  little  company  of  amateur  actors,  of  which 
Moliere  was  a  member,  decided  to  become  professionals, 
they  organized  in  accordance  with  another  custom  of  the 
time.  In  France,  in  Moliere' s  day,  as  in  England,  in 
Shakspere's,  a  theatrical  enterprise  was  rarely  if  ever  the 
speculation  of  a  single  manager  who  was  responsible  for 
all  the  risks  of  the  undertaking  and  who  pocketed  all  the 
profits,  as  is  the  practice  now.  The  chief  performers  were 
then  their  own  managers,  and  their  venture  was  co-opera- 
tive. Chappuzeau,  in  his  contemporary  account  of  the 
French  theaters  in  the  seventeenth  century,  notes  that 
although  the  actors  "loved  monarchy  in  the  state,  they 
rejected  it  in  their  own  organization."  All  the  leading 
tragedians  and  comedians,  male  and  female,  were  equal 
sharers  in  the  risks  and  in  the  profits,  taking  no  salaries 
themselves,  but  paying  wages  to  a  few  humbler  assistants. 
This  was  the  system  under  which  the  Globe  Theater  in 
London  was  governed  when  Shakspere  was  a  sharer.  This 
is  still  the  system,  only  a  little  modified,  to  be  found  now 
at  the  Theatre  Francais  in  Paris — the  Comedie-Fran^aise 
being  the  direct  descendant  of  the  little  company  of  comedi- 
ans which  Moliere  helped  to  constitute  in  1643,  on  tne 
thirtieth  of  June. 

It  was  also  a  custom  in  those  days  for  a  company  of 
actors  to  bestow  a  sonorous  and  grandiloquent  name  on 
their  organization;  and  Moliere  and  his  associates  chose  to 
entitle  themselves  the  Illustre  Theatre.  By  good  fortune 
the  articles  of  association  still  exist;  and  from  this  docu- 
ment we  learn  that  there  were  ten  sharers,  that  all  matters 
of  importance  were  to  be  decided  in  general  assembly, 
that  no  partner  should  withdraw  without  giving  four 
months'  notice;  that  Madeleine  Bejart  was  to  have  the 
right  of  choosing  the  parts  she  might  prefer,  and  that  the 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  25 

heroes  were  to  be  taken  alternatively  by  Moliere  and  by 
two  other  leading  performers.  This  last  clause  has  an 
importance  of  its  own,  since  it  shows  that  Moliere,  who  was 
later  to  be  acknowledged  as  the  foremost  comic  actor  of 
the  time,  had  not  yet  discovered  where  his  genius  lay, 
and  that  he  aspired  at  first  to  heroic  characters  in  serious 
plays.  Perhaps  this  aspiration  was  due  in  the  beginning 
to  a  desire  to  play  opposite  parts  to  Madeleine  Bejart;  but 
whatever  its  origin,  it  survived  the  long  years  of  strolling, 
since  we  shall  find  him,  even  after  the  return  of  the  com- 
pany to  Paris,  attempting  unsuccessfully  the  heroic  char- 
acter in  his  own  romantic  play  'Don  Garcie  de  Navarre/ 
It  is  significant  that  the  best  portrait  we  have  of  Moliere, 
that  painted  by  his  friend,  Pierre  Mignard,  represents  him 
in  the  tragic  character  of  Cesar  in  Corneille's  'Mort  de 
Pompee/  It  is  a  fact,  frequently  observed  in  the  history 
of  the  stage,  that  comedians,  however  richly  endowed  with 
humor,  often  long  for  a  chance  to  reveal  themselves  in 
pathetic,  and  even  in  tragic,  characters.  From  this  error 
of  judgment  apparently  not  even  Moliere  was  exempt,  in 
spite  of  all  his  insight  into  human  weakness. 

II 

Perhaps  it  is  not  quite  accurate  to  describe  the  company 
of  the  Illustre  Theatre  as  consisting  entirely  of  ambitious 
amateurs.  One  of  the  actors  who  was  to  divide  the  heroes 
with  Moliere  was  the  brother  of  an  actress,  and  he  may 
very  likely  have  had  occasion  to  appear  professionally. 
Assuredly,  Madeleine  Bejart  was  no  novice;  although  then 
only  twenty-five  years  of  age,  she  had  already  acquired  the 
theatrical  experience  which  justified  her  claim  to  the  choice 
of  parts;  and  perhaps  the  elder  of  her  brothers  may  also 


26  MOLIERE 

have  seen  service  c5n  the  stage.  But  Moliere  himself  was 
one  of  the  amateurs;  however  rich  in  ambition,  he  was 
poor  in  experience.  Although  he  was  far  better  educated 
than  any  of  the  others,  and  although  in  time  he  rose  to  be 
the  chief  of  the  cor/pany,  By  force  of  character  and  ability, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  at  the  start  the  dominant  figure  in 
the  little  band  was  Madeleine  Be j art.  She  was  the  main- 
spring of  tHe  ente»jirise  in-all  the  early  years  of  dishearten- 
ing struggle.  The  other  signers  of  the  original  contract 
of  association  might  drop  out  and  be  replaced  by  new- 
comers, but  the  Bejarts,  two  sisters  and  two  brothers,  clung 
together,  and  Moliere  clung  to  them. 

In  many  ways  Madeleine  Bejart  was  a  remarkable 
woman.  She  was  at  least  passably  good  looking,  with 
luxuriant  red  hair.  She  Became  an  excellent  actress,  win- 
ning the  praise  of  La  Fontaine,  for  one.  She  wrote  verse 
not  inferior  to  the  average  of  French  poetry  at  that  time. 
She  may  even  have  composed  a  comedy  or  two.  She  was 
the  daughter  of  a  man  of  affairs,  connected  with  the  law; 
from  him  she  seems  to  have  inherited  her  clear  head 
and  her  capacity  for  business.  Certainly  she  had  a  full 
share  of  that  shrewd  common  sense  which  is  not  unus- 
ual in  French  women.  Various  documents  reveal  that  she 
managed  the  money  affairs  of  the  little  company,  and 
also  those  of  Moliere;  that  she  did  this  with  skill  and  with 
success  is  proved  by  the  little  fortune  she  was  able  to  leave 
at  her  death,  and  by  the  ample  means  enjoyed  by  Moliere 
in  the  later  years  of  his  life.  Yet  she  had  failed  to 
manage  her  own  life  satisfactorily;  five  years  before  the 
organization  of  the  Illustre  Theatre,  when  she  was  only 
a  girl  of  twenty,  she  had  borne  an  illegitimate  daughter  to 
the  Comte  de  Modene,  a  rakish  adventurer,  who  had  soon 
left  Paris  in  attendance  on  the  Duke  de  Guise.  As  her 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  27 

lover  had  separated  from  his  wife,  who  was  known  to 
be  in  failing  health,  and  who  died  a  few  years  later,  it 
is  likely  that  Madeleine  Bejart  had  hoped  to  become  a 
countess. 

While  they  were  waiting  for  Metayer's  tennis-court  to 
be  made  ready  for  them,  the  company  of  the  IllustreTheatre 
went  down  the  Seine  to  Rouen  and  played  there  during  the 
fair  which  began  in  October.  Corneille  was  still  residing 
in  his  native  city;  and  Moliere  may  then  have  made  the 
acquaintance  of  the  elder  poet,  two  of  whose  later  plays 
he  was  to  produce  more  than  a  score  of  years  thereafter. 
He  may  also  have  essayed  more  than  one  of  the  lyric  heroes 
of  Corneille's  tragedies,  then  in  the  springtime  of  their 
success.  He  may  even  have  acted  in  the  '  Menteur,'  which 
had  opened  a  new  vein  in  French  comedy,  that  Moliere 
was  to  cultivate  himself  in  the  years  to  come.  But  this  is 
mere  conjecture;  and  we  have  now  no  means  of  knowing 
whether  or  not  the  little  band  of  actors  prospered  in  this 
first  engagement  at  Rouen. 

Before  the  end  of  the  year  they  were  back  in  Paris;  and 
in  the  first  month  of  1644  they  opened  the  doors  of  the 
theater  which  had  been  made  ready  for  them.  The  new 
organization  had  rivals  long  established  in  popular  favor, 
the  older  companies  at  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne  and  at  the 
theater  in  the  Marais.  Very  likely  the  young  actors  were 
not  yet  expert  in  their  art,  and  assuredly  they  had  not  yet 
won  public  favor.  Pretty  certainly  they  were  unable  to 
bring  out  new  plays  by  favorite  authors,  although  they  did 
what  they  could,  buying  pieces  from  du  Ryer  and  from 
Tristan  1'Hermite,  and  taking  into  the  company  an  actor- 
playwright,  Desfontaines,  whose  dramas  they  produced. 
Possibly  also  the  situation  of  the  theater  was  not  well 
selected.  Whatever  the  reasons,  the  enterprise  failed,  in 


28  MOLIERE 

spite  of  the  fact  that  the  associates  acquired  the  right  to 
entitle  themselves  the  "comedians  of  the  Duke  of  Orleans." 
It  was  the  custom  then  in  France,  as  it  had  been  in  England 
under  the  Tudors,  for  a  company  of  actors  to  put  them- 
selves under  the  patronage  of  some  great  noble;  the  actors 
of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne  claimed  the  protection  of  the 
king  himself. 

The  members  of  the  Illustre  Theatre  soon  came  to 
believe  that  the  cause  of  their  misfortune  was  the  unsatis- 
factory situation  of  their  theater;  and  at  the  end  of  the  year 
they  were  able  to  cancel  the  lease.  Early  in  1645  they  took 
possession  of  another  tennis-court,  that  known  as  the  Croix- 
Noire,  which  was  not  far  from  the  Place  Royale,  and 
therefore  nearer  to  the  more  aristocratic  quarter  of  the 
city.  But  their  bad  luck  followed  them  across  the  Seine; 
and  they  soon  got  deeper  and  deeper  into  debt.  As  the 
son  of  a  prosperous  tradesman,  Moliere  had  pledged  his 
own  credit  for  money  owed;  and  in  the  middle  of  the  sum- 
mer, only  two  years  after  he  had  gone  on  the  stage,  he  was 
arrested  for  various  debts  and  locked  up  in  the  Grand- 
Chatelet.  Here  he  remained  for  nearly  a  week;  and  he 
was  set  free  at  last  only  when  a  certain  Aubry,  with  whom 
the  Illustre  Theatre  had  had  business  dealings,  agreed  to 
stand  security  for  the  amount  due.  That  the  company 
continued  in  difficulties  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  eighteen 
months  after  Moliere's  arrest,  his  father  had  to  agree  to 
indemnify  Aubry,  and  that  this  debt  was  not  cleared  until 
1649,  l°ng  a^ter  tne  Illustre  Theatre  had  departed  from 
Paris. 

At  last  the  ambitious  young  actors  saw  the  futility  of  their 
attempt  to  establish  themselves  in  rivalry  with  the  two  older 
companies;  and  they  resolved  to  leave  the  capital  and  to 
see  if  provincial  audiences  might  not  be  less  exacting  and 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  29 

more  cordial.  They  had  ceased  to  entitle  themselves  the 
"comedians  of  the  Duke  of  Orleans."  They  were  fewer 
in  number  than  when  they  began;  some  of  the  original 
associates  had  deserted;  and  other  performers,  who  had 
been  welcomed  in  their  ranks,  had  withdrawn  after  a  brief 
experience.  But  the  Bejart  family  was  steadfast;  and  so 
was  Moliere. 

He  was  now  twenty-five,  in  the  full  strength  of  young 
manhood.  With  his  native  gift  for  acting,  he  had  un- 
doubtedly made  rapid  progress  in  the  art  of  which  he  was 
later  to  be  received  as  the  chief  ornament.  Apparently  he 
had  shown  no  ambition  as  yet  to  become  a  playwright; 
he  seems  to  have  been  content  then  to  be  only  a  player, 
probably  practising  himself  rather  in  serious  than  in  comic 
parts.  He  had  been  growing,  not  only  in  skill,  but  in  au- 
thority; and  his  force  of  character,  his  shrewdness  and  his 
faculty  for  winning  friends,  were  beginning  to  make  them- 
selves felt.  His  position  in  the  little  band  was  more  im- 
portant at  the  end  of  their  stay  in  the  capital  than  it  had 
been  when  the  company  was  originally  organized. 

The  three  years  in  Paris  must  have  matured  him  and 
made  him  more  resourceful.  It  was  a  stern  apprentice- 
ship; and  it  fitted  him  to  undergo  the  adventures  and  the 
misadventures  of  the  next  twelve  years,  while  he  was 
strolling  in  the  provinces,  visiting  the  city  of  his  birth  only 
at  rare  intervals.  From  this  inglorious  wandering  he  was 
to  come  back,  long  before  he  was  forty,  an  accomplished 
comedian  and  the  chief  of  a  company  of  highly  trained 
actors,  all  devoted  to  him  personally;  he  was  to  return 
ripe  for  the  swift  outflowering  of  his  genius  as  a  comic 
dramatist. 


3o  MOLIERE 

III 

There  were  then  a  dozen  or  fifteen  companies  of  actors 
traveling  from  one  town  to  another.'  Several  of  these  were 
more  or  less  prosperous,  settled  in  one  or  another  of  the 
chief  provincial  cities,  from  which  they  made  frequent 
excursions  into  the  neighboring  country.  Others  had 
hard  work  to  win  a  bare  living  and  were  often  on  the  verge 
of  disbanding  in  disgust.  Few  of  them  can  have  been  as 
small  in  numbers  or  as  poverty-stricken  as  the  little  band 
whose  exploits  and  misfortunes  are  recorded  in  the  *  Roman 
Comique,'  the  first  part  of  which  appeared  in  1651  and  the 
second  in  1657,  while  Moliere  and  his  companions  were 
still  undergoing  trials  like  those  that  befell  the  chief 
figures  in  the  novel.  In  spite  of  its  farce  and  its  caricature, 
Scarron's  story  must  be  accepted  as  a  fairly  veracious 
portrayal  of  the  existing  conditions  of  a  strolling  player's 
career.  This  was  a  life  of  many  privations,  of  many  hard- 
ships and  humiliations,  of  constant  uncertainty  and  of 
occasional  prosperity.  <We  can  see  proof  of  Moliere's 
adroitness  and  of  his  good  judgment  in  the  fact  that  after 
he  became  its  chief  the  company,  which  had  left  Paris 
discouraged  by  defections  and  laden  with  debt,  was  able 
to  gain  the  favor  of  the  public,  to  win  a  wide  reputation, 
and  to  acquire  a  comfortable  reserve  of  money. 

Although  the  theater  had  not  been  held  respectable  in 
the  later  Middle  Ages  and  in  the  earlier  Renascence,  partly 
because  of  the  violence  and  the  crudity  of  its  representa- 
tions, it  had  risen  in  public  esteem  during  Moliere's  youth. 
Especially  had  it  been  in  less  disrepute  since  Richelieu  had 
honored  it  with  his  august  protection  and  had  even  con- 
descended to  compose  plays  himself,  for  the  performance 
of  which  he  had  built  a  sumptuous  theater.  The  stage  was 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  31 

attracting  to  itself  as  actors  men  of  better  character  and 
more  education,  such  as  Moliere  himself;  and  the  acted 
drama  was  regarded  as  more  worthy  of  consideration  since 
Rotrou  and  Corneille  had  lifted  it  into  literature. 

And  yet  most  of  the  professional  actors  wandering 
through  the  provinces  were  little  better  than  miserable 
wretches,  ever  on  the  ragged  edge  of  poverty  and  rarely 
deserving  a  better  fate.  The  performances  given  by  these 
strollers  were  often  inexcusably  careless  in  tragedy  and 
undeniably  vulgar  in  comedy.  Only  infrequently  did  a 
company  appear  capable  of  presenting  a  serious  play 
worthily  and  of  acting  a  comedy  without  offence;  and  when 
it  arrived  unheralded  in  a  new  town,  it  had  to  overcome  the 
prejudice  left  by  less  artistic  and  less  conscientious  pre- 
decessors. If  it  had  the  good  fortune  to  approve  itself  and 
to  win  general  approbation,  it  might  be  called  upon  to 
appear  in  the  palace  of  the  governor  or  to  give  a  series  of 
performances  while  the  provincial  assembly  was  in  session, 
for  which  services  it  would  be  amply  rewarded.  But  even 
when  it  had  established  its  character  and  compelled 
recognition  by  its  merits,  it  was  dependent  on  the  caprice 
of  the  civil  authorities;  and  it  might  meet  with  the  hostility 
of  the  clergy,  who  often  forbade  theatrical  performances  of 
all  kinds  during  the  long  weeks  of  Lent.  It  was  expected 
to  give  its  services  freely  and  frequently  for  charity,  for  the 
relief  of  the  poor  and  for  the  support  of  the  sick.  Its  mem- 
bers were  regarded  as  vagabonds,  having  no  social  standing 
and  no  right  of  privacy.  In  the  pages  of  Scarron's  story 
we  can  see  how  bores  of  all  sorts  felt  themselves  at  liberty  to 
intrude  into  the  greenroom  and  even  into  the  private  apart- 
ments of  the  performers. 

This  was  the  life  Moliere  was  to  lead  for  twelve  years, 
slowly  acquiring  such  renown  as  the  provinces  could  con- 


32  MOLIERE 

fer,  slowly  paying  off  the  debts  which  had  driven  him  from 
Paris,  and  slowly  accumulating  the  reserve  funds  which 
might  enable  him  to  risk  a  return  to  the  capital.  That  he 
visited  Paris  more  than  once  during  this  long  exile  we  know. 
He  had  to  be  there  sometimes  to  attend  to  matters  of  busi- 
ness; and  he  may  have  had  to  go  back  on  occasion  to  engage 
new  members  of  the  company,  since  it  was  at  the  capital 
that  theatrical  recruits  could  best  be  enlisted. 

The  record  of  the  wanderings  of  the  little  company  is  not 
complete,  although  a  tireless  search  has  been  made  in  the 
archives  of  many  towns  and  in  all  sorts  of  law-papers  pre- 
served in  the  offices  of  notaries — marriage-contracts, 
baptismal  records,  death-certificates  and  the  like;  through 
these  recent  investigations  our  knowledge  as  to  Moliere's 
travels  has  been  made  far  fuller  than  it  was  a  few  years  ago. 
At  first  the  company  went  to  the  west;  and  in  1647  tne7 
appeared  at  Bordeaux,  then  entitling  themselves  "the 
comedians  of  the  Duke  of  Epernon."  In  1648  they  were 
at  Nantes;  and  they  also  played  at  various  places  in  the 
Vendee.  Then  they  made  their  way  further  south;  and 
in  1649  tney  performed  at  Toulon,  at  Limoges  and  at 
Angouleme.  In  1650  they  were  for  a  while  at  Narbonne; 
and  in  1652  they  acted  at  Lyons,  which  was  to  be  the  cen- 
ter of  their  activities  for  the  remaining  years  of  their  exile 
from  Paris. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  Lyons  was  relatively  more 
important  than  it  is  in  the  twentieth.  Its  inhabitants  had 
the  southern  relish  for  the  theater,  and  they  had  delighted 
in  the  improvised  plays  of  the  Italian  actors,  who  exhibited 
their  ingenuity  and  their  activity  in  the  semi-acrobatic, 
semi-pantomimic  comedy-of-masks.  Perhaps  it  was  be- 
cause he  had  seen  the  unfailing  popularity  of  these  robust 
and  boisterous  Italian  farces  that  Moliere  was  led  to  take 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  33 

his  first  steps  into  dramatic  authorship,  by  writing  farces  of 
his  own  of  the  same  unpretending  type,  modelled  closely 
upon  Italian  originals.  Although  they  are  but  trifles, 
obvious  imitations  of  Italian  pieces,  they  reveal  his  instinct 
for  theatrical  effect.  These  modest  attempts  taught  him 
how  to  put  a  play  together  so  as  to  arouse  and  to  hold  the 
interest  of  an  audience. 

It  was  at  Lyons  that  he  first  ventured  on  a  more  ambi- 
tious effort  and  produced  the  first  play  that  he  consid- 
ered worthy  of  his  signature.  This  was  the  'Etourdi/  a 
comedy  in  five  acts  in  rimed  alexandrines;  its  structure 
shows  the  strong  influence  of  the  Italian  comedy-of-masks, 
an  influence  which  was  to  be  evident  to  the  very  end  of  his 
career  as  a  dramatist.  In  this  same  year,  1653,  Moliere 
and  his  comrades  were  authorized  to  style  themselves  "the 
comedians  of  the  Prince  of  Conti."  This  brother  of  the 
great  Conde,  seven  years  younger  than  the  dramatist,  had 
been  his  school-fellow  during  the  last  months  of  Moliere's 
attendance  at  the  College  de  Clermont.  At  the  time  when 
he  conferred  his  patronage  on  the  company  he  was  a  wild 
young  fellow,  leading  a  scandalous  life.  Two  years  later 
he  was  converted;  and  his  conversion  was  the  cause  of  his 
insisting  in  1657  that  the  actors  should  no  longer  bear  his 
name.  His  religious  fervor  swelled  until  he  was  moved  to 
write  a  diatribe  against  the  theater,  the  'Traite  de  la 
Comedie  et  des  Spectacles,'  published  in  1667. 

The  company  was  now  prosperous  and  its  members  were 
winning  reputation.  Madeleine  Bejart  was  then  rich 
enough  to  lend  money  to  the  province,  perhaps  her  own  and 
perhaps  a  part  of  the  funds  of  the  company.  One  of  her 
brothers  published  a  book  on  the  heraldry  of  Languedoc. 
As  they  had  no  reason  to  leave  the  region  where  they  were 
made  welcome,  the  record  reveals  them  in  the  next  few 


34  MOLIERE 

years  here  and  there  in  the  same  part  of  France.  In  1654 
they  acted  for  a  while  at  Montpellier;  and  in  1655  they  are 
found  at  Pezenas.  It  was  at  Beziers  in  1656  that  Moliere 
brought  out  his  second  play,  the  'Depit  Amoureux/  also  a 
comedy  in  five  acts  in  verse.  In  this  same  year  they  were  at 
Narbonne  again;  and  the  next  year  they  visited  Dijon, 
besides  lingering  once  more  for  a  while  in  Lyons.  In  1658 
they  are  known  to  have  been  at  Grenoble.  Their  wander- 
ings had  then  lasted  twelve  years  and  they  were  ready  to 
return  to  Paris,  where  their  reputation  had  preceded  them 
and  where  they  were  to  be  warmly  welcomed. 

IV 

During  these  years  of  Moliere's  provincial  strolling  many 
things  had  happened  in  France  and  in  England.  In  Paris, 
in  1649,  tne  ^rst:  volume  of  the  most  popular  tale  of  the 
time  had  been  published,  Scudery's  'Grand  Cyrus/  the 
tenth  and  final  tome  of  which  appeared  in  1653;  and  in 
1657  the  Abbe  d'Aubignac  had  put  forth  his  'Pratique  du 
Theatre/  a  code  of  laws  for  all  aspiring  dramatic  poets. 
In  1651,  Louis  XIV,  then  only  thirteen,  was  declared  to  have 
attained  his  majority;  and  in  1654  he  was  crowned  at 
Rheims.  In  this  coronation  year  the  elder  Poquelin  ceded 
his  business  to  his  second  son;  and  a  year  later  one  of 
Moliere's  half-sisters  took  the  veil.  And  in  1656  Port 
Royal  was  closed  by  royal  edict,  a  triumph  for  the  Jesuits, 
a  fatal  check  to  the  Jansenists. 

Although  the  Thirty  Years  War  had  come  to  an  end  in 
1648,  with  the  cession  of  Alsace  to  France,  there  had  been 
constant  intriguing  and  insurrection,  which  almost  threat- 
ened the  throne  itself.  Richelieu  was  dead;  and  during 
the  minority  of  Louis  XIV  the  adroit  and  avaricious 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  35 

Mazarin  ruled  France  by  the  grace  of  Anne  of  Austria,  the 
queen  regent,  and  in  spite  of  his  increasing  unpopularity. 
Those  were  the  weary  years  of  the  Fronde,  the  pettiest  and 
meanest  of  civil  wars,  but  not  the  least  destructive  and 
calamitous.  It  began  as  a  guerrilla  strife  of  epigrams  and 
pamphlets,  a  faction  fight  of  powerful  nobles,  and  even  of 
princes  of  the  royal  blood,  who  did  not  hesitate  to  conspire 
openly  against  the  crown,  gaily  guilty  of  high  treason  and 
gladly  enlisting  the  aid  of  foreign  invaders.  At  first  a 
mere  paper  warfare,  it  led  soon  to  bloodshed  and  even  to 
battles  in  the  streets  of  the  capital  and  to  the  devastation 
of  the  outlying  country.  In  the  year  i6£z,  in  the  interval 
between  the  declaration  of  his  majority  and  his  corona- 
tion, Louis  XIV  had  the  humiliation  of  seeing  the  guns 
of  a  royal  fortress,  the  Bastille,  turned  against  the  royal 
troops,  when  the  insurgents  were  commanded  by  Conde 
and  when  the  forces  of  the  crown  were  under  the  orders  of 
Turenne,  who  had  himself  been  in  armed  revolt  only  two 
years  earlier. 

It  was  lucky  for  Moliere  and  his  companions  that  they 
had  not  lingered  longer  in  Paris,  and  even  that  they  had 
left  Rouen  and  Bordeaux  for  the  south.  The  territory 
around  Paris  and  to  the  north  and  the  west  was  grievously 
pillaged,  first  by  one  army  and  then  by  the  other.  The  un- 
paid soldiers  lived  off  the  country  and  swept  it  bare,  often 
maltreating  and  even  torturing  the  unfortunate  inhabitants. 
The  tilling  of  the  fields  ceased  and  the  peasants  starved. 
Pestilence  was  the  worst  of  camp-followers,  as  it  was 
the  most  constant.  At  Rouen  seventeen  thousand  perished 
in  a  single  year.  Farms  went  out  of  cultivation,  sometimes 
for  miles  on  end.  Wide  stretches  of  country  were  left 
unpopulated  except  by  a  few  poor  wretches  hiding  in  the 
woods  or  living  in  caves.  All  this  time  the  taxes  were 


36  MOLIERE 

being  increased  remorselessly,  and  they  were  collected  with 
pitiless  ferocity.  Mazarin  kept  Fouquet  in  charge  of  the 
finances  and  shared  with  him  a  portion  of  the  moneys 
wrung  from  the  helpless  people.  Fouquet  himself  declared 
that  Mazarin  had  kept  for  his  own  pocket  more  than  forty 
million  livres.  In  many  of  the  provinces  agriculture  was 
almost  dead,  manufactures  were  dying  and  commerce  was 
decaying.  The  nation  was  worn  out  by  this  useless  waste 
and  by  this  suffering  to  no  purpose;  it  was  ready  for  the 
reforms  of  Colbert  and  for  the  rigorous  autocracy  of  Louis 
XIV,  whenever  the  death  of  Mazarin  should  leave  the  young 
king  free  to  rule  by  himself  and  for  himself. 

Although  Provence  and  Languedoc  may  not  have  suf- 
fered in  these  ignoble  conspiracies  as  severely  as  Normandy, 
they  were  brought  to  the  brink  of  ruin.  Their  peasants 
were  pillaged  and  murdered  by  the  partisans  of  both  sides 
in  turn;  and  in  these  provinces  those  in  authority  revealed 
themselves  selfish  and  lawless.  Moliere  must  have  seen 
many  a  crying  denial  of  justice  and  many  a  bitter  oppres- 
sion revolting  to  his  manhood.  The  memory  of  these  mis- 
deeds may  have  intensified  the  bitterness  of  the  austere 
hero  of  his  loftiest  comedy,  the  *  Misanthrope/  the  play  in 
which  the  poet  most  amply  expressed  his  melancholy  and 
into  which  he  put  the  most  of  himself.  No  account  of  the 
development  of  Moliere's  character  and  of  his  genius  is 
adequate  which  does  not  allow  full  weight  to  the  powerful 
impression  made  on  him  by  the  horrors  he  had  been  forced 
to  witness  in  the  hideous  period  of  the  Fronde. 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  37 


These  years  of  wandering,  with  all  their  vicissitudes  and 
with  their  occasional  spectacles  of  gloom,  were  years  of 
arduous  training  for  his  future  work.  "In  stillness  talent 
forms  itself,  but  character  in  the  great  current  of  the  world," 
so  Goethe  declared;  and  although  Moliere  was  not  in  the 
capital  he  was  never  out  of  the  great  current  of  the  world. 
Perhaps  even  his  health  was  improved  by  his  long  sojourn, 
winter  after  winter,  in  the  softer  climate  of  the  southern 
provinces,  which  must  have  been  beneficial  for  that  weak- 
ness of  the  chest  from  which  he  was  to  suffer  increasingly 
after  his  return  to  Paris.  Another  benefit  of  these  years  of 
exile  may  be  found  in  the  friendships  he  formed,  one  of  them 
with  the  painter,  Pierre  Mignard.  Moliere  was  good- 
humored  and  even-tempered,  in  spite  of  the  melancholy 
which  came  to  be  his  most  marked  characteristic;  and  he 
revealed  early  the  gift  for  making  friends,  which  was  to  gain 
for  him  his  later  intimacy  with  La  Fontaine  and  Boileau. 

As  his  character  affirmed  itself  and  as  his  powers  ripened, 
he  grew  in  authority,  until  the  little  band  of  strollers  which 
had  been  called  after  Madeleine  Bejart  came  to  be  known 
as  the  company  of  Moliere.  By  force  of  personality  and 
of  varied  ability  he  rose  to  be  its  chief,  a  leader  to  whom  his 
comrades  were  devotedly  attached  and  constantly  loyal, 
often  rejecting  tempting  proposals  to  join  other  companies. 
He  proved  to  be  possessed  of  the  qualifications  needed  by  a 
theatrical  manager — qualifications  far  rarer  than  those  of 
the  actor  or  of  the  dramatist.  He  learned  how  to  gage  the 
taste  of  the  playgoing  public  and  how  to  retain  its  fickle 
approval.  He  acquired  also  the  difficult  art  of  the  stage- 
director,  finding  out  how  to  produce  a  new  play  so  as  to 
reveal  its  full  value  in  the  acting,  and  how  to  utilize  every 


38  MOLIERE 

faculty  latent  in  his  actors.  He  became  a  marvelously 
successful  trainer;  one  of  his  contemporaries  asserted  that 
he  could  make  a  stick  act.  He  had  ventured  into  play- 
writing,  very  modestly  at  first;  in  time  he  gained  a  mastery 
of  its  technic  by  actual  experience,  the  only  teacher  that 
can  impart  the  needful  knowledge. 

.'  For  dramatic  authorship  these  years  of  wandering 
through  France  were  the  best  possible  preparation.  Not 
only  did  they  give  him  a  wide  acquaintance  with  playgoers 
of  all  sorts  and  of  all  degrees  of  culture,  in  towns  and  in 
villages,  but  they  also  brought  him  into  contact  with  various 
ranks  of  society  that  he  would  never  have  met  had  he  stayed 
in  Paris.  Born  in  the  capital  and  familiar  from  his  youth 
up  with  urban  types  of  character,  his  strolling  gave  him  an 
added  knowledge  of  the  peasants  of  several  parts  of  France 
and  of  the  inhabitants  of  several  provincial  towns — a 
knowledge  broader  and  deeper  than  that  of  any  contempo- 
rary author,  most  of  whom  had  their  horizon  bounded  by 
the  walls  of  Paris  or  by  the  gates  of  Versailles.  When 
Moliere  chose  to  depict  a  peasant  girl  or  a  country  gentle- 
man, he  could  draw  on  a  store  of  personal  observations  not 
open  to  any  other  dramatist  of  his  day.  His  equipment  for 
comedy  was  astonishingly  varied.  As  the  son  of  a  trades- 
man employing  many  artisans,  he  had  a  first-hand  knowl- 
edge both  of  the  burghers  and  of  the  working  classes.  As 
a  pupil  of  the  Jesuits,  he  had  been  privileged  to  see  the 
ecclesiastics  at  their  work.  As  a  youthful  substitute  for  his 
father  as  valet  de  chambre  of  the  king,  he  may  have  had 
early  occasion  to  observe  the  peculiarities  of  the  courtiers; 
and  his  later  opportunities  for  this  were  to  be  abundant 
after  his  return  to  Paris,  when  he  had  won  the  favor  of  the 
king  and  when  he  shared  in  the  organization  of  the  court 
spectacles. 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  39 

Yet,  valuable  as  his  experience  was  to  prove,  the  main 
advantage  of  Moliere's  twelve  years'  absence  from  Paris 
is  to  be  found  in  the  privilege  it  gave  him  of  returning 
when  his  powers  as  an  actor  had  ripened  by  constant  prac- 
tice and  of  revealing  himself  suddenly  to  audiences  which 
had  not  been  witnesses  of  the  necessary  hesitancies  of  his 
apprentice  years. 

For  the  tragic  parts  which  he  continued  to  impersonate 
almost  to  the  end  of  his  life,  he  lacked  certain  physical 
qualifications.  He  could  not  fairly  be  called  good-looking; 
he  was  short  and  yet  long-legged;  his  eyes  were  wide  apart, 
his  mouth  was  large  with  full  lips.  Of  course,  these  defects 
were  not  disadvantageous  in  comedy,  and  they  may  even 
have  been  serviceable  in  certain  of  his  more  broadly  comic 
characters.  But  they  could  hardly  fail  to  interfere  with 
his  effectiveness  as  a  heroic  figure;  and  yet  his  long  ex- 
perience in  undertaking  serious  parts  may  very  well  have 
given  assurance  and  authority  to  his  performances  in 
comedy.  As  to  the  surpassing  merit  of  these  performances 
in  comedy,  the  testimony  of  his  contemporaries  is  unani- 
mous. One  of  them  declared  that  Moliere  "was  all  actor, 
from  his  feet  to  his  head;  it  seemed  as  though  he  had 
several  voices;  everything  in  him  spoke;  and  by  a  step,  a 
smile,  a  glance  of  the  eye  or  a  shaking  of  the  head  he  sug- 
gested more  things  than  the  greatest  talker  could  have  said 
in  an  hour." 

There  are  many  suggestive  points  of  similarity  between 
the  careers  and  the  characters  of  Moliere  and  of  Shakspere. 
As  it  happens  they  have  both  expressed  their  theories  about 
the  art  of  acting,  Moliere  in  the  'Impromptu  de  Versailles,' 
Shakspere  in  Hamlet's  remarks  to  the  Players.  And  it  is 
pleasant  to  see  that  these  two  lessons  in  acting  are  in  accord. 
Both  actor-playwrights  dwell  specially  on  the  duty  of  acting 


40  MOLIERE 

simply  and  sincerely,  without  exaggeration  of  voice  and 
without  vehemence  of  gesture.  Perhaps  we  may  discover 
here  one  reason  why  Moliere  failed  to  win  popular  approval 
as  an  actor  of  tragedy.  The  simple  sincerity,  which  was 
appropriate  in  the  performance  of  Shakspere's  tragedies 
and  of  Moliere' s  comedies,  was  not  really  appropriate  in  the 
performance  of  Corneille's  tragedies,  which  were  the  chief 
vehicle  for  serious  acting  in  France  in  Moliere's  early  man- 
hood. These  loftily  pitched  pieces,  lyric  and  fiery,  did 
not  lend  themselves  to  his  severely  natural  method ;  and  in 
his  performances  of  their  fervid  and  exalted  heroes  his 
desire  for  veracity  may  have  betrayed  him.  Certainly  his 
method  could  not  have  been  in  compliance  with  the  taste  of 
his  time,  accustomed  to  the  more  emphatic  acting  to  be  seen 
at  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne,  where  tragedy  was  then  held  to 
be  most  fitly  presented.  Only  at  his  peril  can  an  actor  go 
against  the  prejudice  of  his  contemporaries.  But  even  if 
Moliere  was  unsuccessful  in  tragedy,  he  was  triumphant  in 
comedy. 

VI 

Moliere  was  not  only  the  best  actor  of  his  day,  he  was 
also  one  of  the  best  speakers,  always  felicitous  in  the  little 
addresses  to  the  audience  which  it  was  then  customary 
for  one  of  the  performers  to  make  after  every  performance. 
The  actor  to  whom  this  task  was  entrusted  was  called  the 
"orator"  of  the  company;  and  Moliere  had  been  promoted 
to  this  honorable  post  long  before  he  returned  to  Paris. 
He  seems  to  have  delighted  in  the  exercise  of  this  function, 
always  acquitting  himself  adroitly  and  effectively.  In 
those  days,  before  the  newspaper  had  made  publicity  easy, 
the  tact  of  the  orator  was  most  important  to  the  prosperity 
of  a  theatrical  enterprise.  He  was  the  press-agent  of  the 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  41 

company,  so  to  speak;  it  was  his  province  to  preserve 
the  good-will  of  the  spectators  and  to  excite  their  curiosity 
as  to  the  delights  which  the  company  might  have  in  store 
for  them. 

Moliere's  skill  and  ingenuity  as  the  orator  of  the  com- 
pany was  put  to  a  severe  test  when  the  time  came  for  them 
to  return  to  Paris.  They  had  left  the  capital  after  a  dis- 
astrous failure  to  win  the  popularity  there  that  they  finally 
succeeded  in  acquiring  abundantly  in  the  provinces. 
Heavily  in  debt  they  had  gone  forth  to  wander;  and  they 
returned  at  last  encouraged  by  prosperity,  with  rich 
costumes,  with  money  in  their  pockets  and  out  at  interest, 
and  with  an  approved  repertory  of  plays.  They  had  gone 
away  little  better  than  a  band  of  ambitious  amateurs;  and 
they  came  back  a  company  of  accomplished  comedians, 
having  filled  their  ranks  with  recruits  of  varied  talents. 

The  best  account  of  all  the  circumstances  of  their  return 
to  the  capital  and  of  the  success  which  attended  their  first 
performance  before  the  king  is  to  be  found  in  the  brief  bio- 
graphical sketch  of  Moliere  prefixed  to  the  complete  edition 
of  his  works,  published  seven  years  after  his  death,  by  his 
comrade,  La  Grange.  This  tells  us  that  Moliere' s  friends 
had  advised  him  to  draw  near  to  Paris,  settling  the  com- 
pany in  a  neighboring  city,  so  that  he  might  profit  by  the 
credit  his  merit  had  won  for  him  from  various  persons  of 
distinction  who  felt  kindly  toward  him.  So  the  company 
left  Grenoble,  where  they  had  been  acting,  and  spent  the 
summer  at  Rouen.  In  several  private  visits  to  Paris, 
Moliere  succeeded  in  gaining  the  protection  of  Monsieur, 
as  the  Duke  of  Anjou  (the  younger  brother  of  the  king) 
was  entitled.  The  company  was  taken  under  the  patronage 
of  Monsieur,  who  commended  it  to  the  king  and  to  the 
queen-mother.  Its  members  came  up  from  Rouen,  and  on 


42  MOLIERE 

October  twenty-fourth,  1658,  it  made  its  first  appearance 
before  their  majesties,  on  a  stage  set  up  in  the  Louvre  (in 
what  is  now  known  as  the  Hall  of  the  Caryatides).  The 
chief  play  was  Corneille's  'Nicomede,'  in  which  the  actresses 
of  the  company  seem  to  have  carried  off  the  chief  honors. 
It  is  recorded  that  the  performers  of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne 
were  present,  the  company  of  the  king  himself,  with  which 
Moliere  and  his  companions  were  thereafter  to  engage  in 
bitter  competition. 

When  the  tragedy  was  over  Moliere  came  forward  on 
the  stage,  and  after  having  very  modestly  thanked  the  king 
for  the  kindness  with  which  his  majesty  had  excused  his 
defects  and  those  of  his  company,  who  had  all  of  them 
appeared  trembling  before  so  august  an  assembly,  he  asked 
humbly  for  permission  to  present  one  of  the  little  interludes 
which  had  won  him  some  reputation  in  the  provinces. 
This  compliment  was  so  pleasantly  turned  that  all  the  court 
applauded.  A  little  farce,  the  'Docteur  Amoureux/ 
was  then  performed,  to  the  delight  of  everybody,  for 
this  was  a  field  in  which  Moliere  had  to  fear  no  rivalry. 
His  performance  in  this  little  play,  one  of  his  own  (and  now 
lost),  was  so  satisfactory  that  Louis  XIV  authorized  the 
company  to  remain  in  Paris  and  accorded  it  the  use  of  the 
royal  theater  in  the  Petit-Bourbon,  which  Moliere  and  his 
companions  were  to  share  with  the  Italian  comedians, 
playing  on  alternate  nights.  In  this  playhouse  the  new- 
comers made  their  first  appearance  on  the  third  of  No- 
vember. 

In  Paris  at  this  theater,  or  at  another  also  belonging 
to  the  king,  Moliere  was  to  remain  with  his  company  for 
the  fifteen  crowded  years  of  life  which  were  left  to  him. 
He  had  brought  back  with  him  half-a-dozen  of  his  little 
farces  and  two  rimed  comedies  in  five  acts,  the  'Etourdi' 


HIS  APPRENTICESHIP  43 

and  the  '  Depit  Amoureux.'  Firmly  established  at  last  in 
his  native  town,  with  the  assured  support  of  the  king,  he 
was  to  develop  steadily  with  the  passing  years  and  to  feel 
his  way  slowly  toward  a  higher  type  of  comedy  than  had 
been  foreseen  by  any  of  his  predecessors. 


CHAPTER  III 
HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS 

I 

THE  theater  of  the  Petit-Bourbon,  in  a  wing  of  the 
Louvre,  was  the  royal  theater  in  which  the  court-ballets 
were  performed;  and  four  years  earlier  the  young  king  had 
himself  appeared  in  a  ballet,  made  more  effective  by  the 
ingenious  machinery  of  the  Italian  Torelli.  The  company 
of  Italian  comedians,  headed  by  the  incomparable  Scara- 
mouche,  continued  to  appear  there  on  the  three  best  nights 
of  the  week,  Sunday,  Wednesday  and  Friday,  leaving  to 
Moliere  and  his  companions  the  less  popular  evenings. 
The  bare  hall  with  its  stage  at  one  end  and  its  narrow 
galleries  along  the  walls  had  been  fitted  up  by  the  Italians; 
and  Moliere' s  company  paid  them  fifteen  hundred  livres 
toward  the  cost  of  these  improvements. 

The  company  then  consisted  of  ten  members,  Moliere, 
Madeleine  Bejart,  her  sister,  who  was  known  as  Mile. 
Herve,  and  her  two  brothers,  Joseph  and  Louis,  "Gros 
Rene"  Du  Pare  and  his  wife,  De  Brie  and  his  wife,  and  Du 
Fresne.  They  drew  on  the  repertory  which  had  been 
popular  in  the  provinces;  yet  their  performances  of  Cor- 
neille's  'Rodogune'  and  'Mort  de  PompeV  did  not  win 
favor.  But  Moliere  soon  brought  out  the  two  five-act 
comedies  which  he  had  produced  successfully  in  the  prov- 
inces, first  the  'Etourdi'  and  then  the  'Depit  Amoureux'; 

44 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  45 

and  these  achieved  immediate  popularity,  not  only  with  the 
burghers  of  Paris  but  also  with  the  courtiers  and  the  people 
of  fashion.  By  its  acting  of  these  comedies,  the  new  com- 
pany speedily  established  itself  in  favor. 

The  performances  took  place  late  in  the  afternoon — 
later  than  those  given  in  London  half  a  century  earlier  by 
Shakspere's  associates,  since  the  half-roofed  English  play- 
house was  dependent  on  daylight,  whereas  the  Parisian 
theater  was  lit  by  candles.  The  regulations  prescribed 
that  the  play  should  begin  at  two;  but  sometimes  it  was 
four  or  even  five  before  the  curtains  parted.  The  standing 
playgoers  in  the  pit  were  bften  boisterous  and  noisy;  the 
many  spectators  seated  on  the  stage  often  gossiped  about 
their  own  affairs  loudly  enough  to  interfere  with  the  actors 
— just  as  the  seated  spectators  had  often  chattered  in  Shak- 
spere's  theater.  Turbulent  soldiers  sometimes  forced  their 
way  in  without  paying,  insulting  and  maltreating  the  door- 
keepers. Intoxicated  roisterers  sometimes  thrust  them- 
selves on  the  stage  itself  and  interrupted  the  performance. 
These  disorders  may  not  have  been  frequent  but  they  were 
not  uncommon;  on  occasion  they  ended  in  bloodshed 
and  even  in  murder.  They  were  not  confined  to  the  thea- 
ter where  Moliere  was  playing;  and  they  were  a  survival 
perhaps  of  the  violent  lawlessness  of  the  Fronde,  and  per- 
haps of  the  disrepute  of  the  theater  in  France  before  Cor- 
neille  had  lifted  it  up  and  before  Richelieu  had  honored  it 
with  his  protection. 

While  ill-bred  intruders  may  now  and  again  have  de- 
stroyed the  proper  quiet  of  the  playhouse,  the  audience  con- 
sisted chiefly  of  the  plain  people  of  Paris,  always  devoted  to 
the  drama  and  trained  by  experience  to  enjoy  it.  It  was 
this  average  citizen  whose  preferences  and  peculiarities 
Moliere  as  a  playwright  had  ever  to  keep  in  mind.  His 


46  MOLIERE 

theater  might  win  the  fickle  favor  of  the  court  and  of  the 
people  of  fashion;  he  might  even  find  profit  in  devising 
special  spectacles  for  performance  before  the  king;  but  he 
was  a  playwright  by  instinct  and  therefore  he  wrote  his 
comedies  to  amuse  the  broader  body  of  his  contemporaries 
who  constituted  the  mainstay  of  his  theater.  The  born 
dramatist  never  appeals  to  the  chosen  few  alone,  although 
he  seeks  for  their  suffrages  also;  he  keeps  his  eye  fixed  on 
the  average  man,  citizen  or  courtier,  poor  or  rich,  vulgar  or 
refined,  educated  or  uneducated. 

Moliere  was  himself  a  burgher  of  Paris  and  he  understood 
the  great  middle  class  to  which  he  belonged;  he  shared 
their  ideas  and  even  some  of  their  prejudices;  he  had  their 
hearty  common  sense.  He  knew  that  he  had  to  rely  on  this 
middle  class  to  support  his  enterprise — the  middle  class 
aerated  and  enlivened  by  an  infusion  of  wits  and  scholars 
and  courtiers.  Yet  in  spite  of  this  infusion  he  could  not  go 
too  far  in  advance  of  them,  or  they  might  fail  to  follow;  and 
he  knew  that  they  in  their  turn  would  not  lag  too  far  behind. 
The  relation  of  the  playwright  with  the  playgoers  must 
ever  be  close,  since  the  audience  as  a  whole  condition  the 
dramatic  poet,  and  explain  him.  This  was  as  true  in  Paris 
in  Moliere's  day  as  it  was  in  London  in  Shakspere's  and  in 
Athens  in  the  days  of  Sophocles  and  of  Menander.  The 
Parisian  burghers  were  not  only  fond  of  the  theater,  they 
had  also  the  French  liking  for  logic,  for  satire,  and  for  the 
analysis  of  character.  As  George  Meredith  declared,  "one 
excellent  test  of  the  civilization  of  a  country,  I  take  to  be 
the  flourishing  of  the  comic  idea  and  of  comedy;  and  the 
test  of  true  comedy  is  that  it  shall  awaken  thoughtful 
laughter."  This  is  the  test  that  Moliere  and  the  people  of 
Paris  in  his  time  withstood  triumphantly. 

Because  of  this  dependence  of  the  dramatist  upon  the 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  47 

audience  of  his  own  time,  the  playwright  begins  always  by 
giving  the  spectators  what  they  have  been  accustomed  to 
enjoy;  and  he  is  at  liberty  to  develop  his  own  individuality 
only  as  he  can  lead  them  and  train  them  to  like  something 
better  than  they  had  been  used  to.  He  has  to  commence 
where  his  immediate  predecessors  and  his  elder  contem- 
poraries left  off.  He  may  profit  by  all  their  devices,  but 
he  must  begin  by  accepting  the  theatrical  conditions  and 
the  dramatic  conventions  of  the  period.  In  a  word  he 
cannot  make  a  fresh  start,  he  cannot  expect  at  the  very 
beginning  to  have  his  own  way.  This  is  just  what  Shak- 
spere  did  when  he  modestly  followed  in  the  footsteps  of 
Kyd,  of  Lyly  and  of  Marlowe,  and  brought  out  'Titus 
Andronicus,'  ' Love's  Labor's  Lost'  and  'Richard  II';  he 
had  to  commence  by  doing  very  much  the  same  things  as 
the  playwrights  who  had  preceded  him,  in  very  much  the 
same  way,  even  though  he  may  have  done  these  things 
better. 

This  is  what  Moliere  did  also  in  his  turn.  The 
immediate  models  before  his  eyes  were  not  individual 
writers  like  Kyd  and  Lyly  and  Marlowe.  Indeed,  he 
seems  to  have  been  influenced  very  little  by  Corneille 
or  by  Scarron.  The  predecessors  to  whom  he  went  to 
school  were  the  forgotten  French  farce-writers,  the  prolific 
Spanish  dramatists,  and  the  ingenious  devisers  of  the  Ital- 
ian comedy-of-masks.  In  literature  as  in  life  there  is  no 
spontaneous  generation.  There  can  be  no  flower  without 
a  seed;  and  the  seedlings  of  even  the  most  individual  genius 
must  have  been  grown  in  the  gardens  of  those  who  toiled 
before  he  began  to  till  the  soil. 


48  MOLIERE 

II 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  products  of  the  later  Mid- 
dle Ages  and  of  the  earlier  Renascence  is  French  farce — 
full  of  frank  fun  and  of  exuberant  gaiety,  often  robust  be- 
yond the  borders  of  decency,  and  not  infrequently  insinuat- 
ing a  pungent  satire  of  social  conditions.  Sometimes  it  is  a 
monologue,  like  the  boastful  confession  of  cowardice,  made 
by  the  'Franc  Archer  de  Baignolet/  Sometimes  it  is  a 
simple  dialogue  of  give-and-take  repartee,  punctuated  with 
the  slap-stick.  Sometimes  it  is  adroitly  contrived  with  an 
ingeniously  recoiling  intrigue,  as  in  the  'Cuvier.'  The 
masterpiece  of  the  species  is  the  imperishable  'Maitre 
Pierre  Patelin,'  prodigal  in  joyous  situations  and  almost 
rich  enough  in  character-delineation  to  be  lifted  up  to  the 
level  of  comedy.  On  the  one  side  French  farce  has  a  kin- 
ship with  the  Jabliaux,  those  piquant  tales  of  clerical  mis- 
deeds and  of  marital  misadventures  from  which  Boccaccio 
often  borrowed;  and  on  the  other,  it  has  a  likeness  to  the 
fantastic  narrative  of  Rabelais,  the  boldest  and  broadest  of 
humorists. 

The  sole  object  of  the  performers  of  these  farces  was 
immediate  laughter,  fun  for  its  own  sake,  first  of  all,  even 
if  a  satire  might  chance  to  be  concealed  inside  the  fun. 
They  shrank  from  nothing  in  their  efforts  to  arouse  laugh- 
ter, abundant  and  incessant;  and  what  the  farce  lacked 
in  length  it  often  made  up  in  breadth.  Such  a  farce  as  the 
'Meunier,'  for  example,  although  it  was  represented 
as  a  prelude  to  a  pious  mystery,  cannot  be  kept  sweet  by 
any  dose  of  Gallic  salt. 

The  farce-actors,  whether  in  the  capital  or  in  the  country, 
could  perform  anywhere  and  anywhen.  They  had  been 
received  in  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne  and  the  theater  of  the 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  49 

Marais;  and  they  had  also  drawn  crowds  for  the  quack- 
doctors  on  the  Pont-Neuf.  They  had  only  to  set  up  a 
platform  and  to  hang  a  curtain  at  the  back  of  this  bare 
stage;  they  needed  no  scenery,  scant  furniture  and  few 
properties.  They  relied  on  themselves,  on  their  native 
ability  as  fun-makers,  and  on  the  accumulated  traditions 
of  their  craft.  They  were  ready  to  appear  as  soon  as  they 
had  thrust  their  slap-sticks  into  their  girdles  and  had 
smeared  their  faces  with  flour  (just  as  their  modern 
equivalents,  our  negro-minstrels,  smear  their  faces  with 
burnt-cork). 

These  were  the  unassuming  and  vigorous  performers 
Moliere  in  his  boyhood  had  seen  in  the  open  street,  at  the 
fair  of  Saint-Germain,  and  perhaps  also  in  the  playhouse 
itself  (if  it  was  a  fact  that  he  was  taken  to  the  theater  by 
his  grandfather);  and  it  was  from  them  that  he  received 
his  first  impression  of  the  comic  drama.  But  .while  he 
was  wandering  far  from  Paris  the  foremost  of  these  farce- 
actors  had  died  or  left  the  stage;  and  farce  itself  had  fallen 
out  of  fashion,  as  manners  became  more  refined  and  as 
Scarron  and  Corneille  showed  how  comedy  might  be  less 
gross.  Therefore,  when  Moliere  brought  back  from  the 
provinces  the  'Docteur  Amoureux*  and  the  half-score 
other  little  plays  he  had  devised  in  his  strolling  for  his 
own  acting,  he  was  reviving  a  type  of  humorous  drama 
which  the  theater-goers  were  glad  to  see  again.  He 
purged  farce  of  its  more  obvious  indecencies;  and  al- 
though he  remained  frank  he  was  generally  decorous. 
He  retained  all  the  briskness  of  the  farce,  its  unflagging 
swiftness  of  action,  its  sharply  simplified  characters,  and 
its  direct  appeal  to  the  risibilities.  It  was  with  these 
farces  of  his  own  that  he  first  won  the  favor  of  the  king 
and  of  the  people;  and  to  the  end  of  his  career  he  kept 


5o  MOLIERE 

coming  back  to  farce.  Small  wonder  is  it  then  that  his 
contemporaries  thought  of  him  as  essentially  a  farce-actor 
and  that  they  failed  to  perceive  at  once  the  depth  and  the 
range  of  the  larger  comedies  on  which  his  fame  now  rests. 

Closely  akin  to  this  influence  of  French  farce  is  that  of 
Rabelais,  whose  devices  Moliere  also  absorbed  for  his 
profit.  Like  Rabelais,  Moliere  is  not  afraid  of  extrava- 
gance, of  exaggeration,  or  even  of  caricature.  Like  Ra- 
belais, he  has  not  only  humor  in  abundance,  but  also 
that  sense  of  sheer  fun,  which  is  not  quite  the  same  as 
humor — the  hearty  fun,  which  brings  before  us  the  vision 
of  "Laughter,  holding  both  his  sides,"  the  fun  which  is 
uncontaminated  by  any  hint  of  melancholy  or  by  any 
suggestion  of  ulterior  purpose.  The  humor  of  Moliere, 
like  that  of  Rabelais,  is  sustained  by  imagination;  but 
Moliere  is  more  constantly  restrained  within  the  bounda- 
ries of  decency,  and  he  is  free  from  the  wanton  cruelty 
not  uncommon  in  Rabelais. 

It  may  have  been  from  Rabelais  also  that  Moliere 
got  his  racy  vernacular,  rich  in  energetic  expressions 
and  in\  full-colored  phrases,  aglow  with  the  oral  pic- 
turesqueness  appropriate  to  lines  written  to  be  delivered 
on  the  stage.  In  his  earliest  plays  Moliere's  style  was 
bold  and  sturdy;  it  claimed  the  large  liberty  of  the  spoken 
word,  wMch  may  disdain  the  formal  precision  of  gram- 
mar and  Thetoric,  proper  enough  in  what  is  intended  for 
the  eye  rather  than  the  ear.  Even  in  his  most  ambitious 
and  most  carefully  composed  comedies  Moliere  was 
never  finicky  and  never  pedantic.  His  style  had  always 
a  swift  certainty;  and  for  his  purpose  as  a  playwright 
it  was  the  best  possible,  although  its  seemingly  careless 
vigor  has  often  exposed  it  to  the  cavilings  of  those  critics 
who  insist  on  applying  to  the  drama  tests  that  are  ex- 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  51 

clusively  literary.  Whatever  his  commentators  may  do, 
Moliere  never  forgot  that  his  plays  were  written  to  be 
acted. 

Ill 

While  Moliere  owed  much  to  Rabelais  and  to  the  early 
French  farce-writers  he  was  not  a  little  indebted  to  the 
contemporary  playwrights  of  Spain.  At  its  fullest  ex- 
pansion, the  drama  of  the  Iberian  peninsula  was  un- 
rivaled in  felicity  and  fecundity  of  invention;  and  it 
supplied  a  storehouse  of  plots  on  which  the  English,  the 
Italians  and  the  French  drew  at  will.  The  burlesque 
and  boisterous  comedies  of  Scarron  were  borrowed  from 
Spanish  originals,  the  French  comic  writer  taking  over 
the  intrigue  only  and  rejecting  the  delicacy  and  airy 
grace  often  found  in  his  originals.  Hardy  and  Rotrou 
had  refashioned  Spanish  stories;  and  Corneille  had  ap- 
propriated the  plot  of  his  first  tragedy,  the  'Cid/  from 
Guillem  de  Castro,  and  of  his  first  real  comedy,  the  'Men- 
teur,'  from  Alarcon. 

During  the  reign  of  Louis  XIII,  and  in  the  early  years 
of  Louis  XIV,  the  Spanish  influence  was  dominant  at 
the  court.  The  wives  of  both  kings  were  Spanish;  and 
the  relation  between  the  two  kingdoms  was  very  close. 
Companies  of  Spanish  comedians  were  made  welcome 
in  Paris;  and  one  of  them  was  allowed  to  share  the  stage 
of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne,  shortly  after  Moliere' s  return 
to  Paris,  just  as  his  company  shared  the  Petit-Bourbon 
with  the  Italian  comedians.  Spanish  customs  were  in 
fashion  in  court  circles;  and  so  were  the  Spanish  lan- 
guage and  Spanish  literature.  The  verse  of  Voiture 
and  the  prose  of  Balzac  reveal  Spanish  affinities;  even 
the  friends  of  Madame  de  Rambouillet,  the  admirers  and 


52  MOLIERE 

/advocates  of  preciosity,  were  under  the  spell  of  Spain, 
and  the  verbal  conceits  and  the  sublimated  expressions  in 
which  they  delighted  had  analogues  and  perhaps  even 
originals  on  the  far  side  of  the  Pyrenees. 

That  Moliere  had  mastered  Spanish  is  not  known 
certainly;  but  it  is  highly  probable.  With  his  quickness 
he  could  easily  have  picked  up  enough  of  the  kindred 
tongue  to  be  able  to  make  out  the  meaning  of  the  Spanish 
playwrights,  of  whose  dramas  he  had  a  host  of  volumes 
on  the  shelves  of  his  library  when  he  died.  Many  a 
separate  speech  in  his  comedies  has  been  paralleled  with 
this  or  that  passage  in  the  Spanish  dramatic  poets;  and 
this  goes  to  show  that  he  had  studied  these  plays  until 
characteristic  turns  of  phrase  lingered  in  his  memory. 
It  is  very  probable,  for  instance,  that  he  had  read  Lope 
de  Vega's  '  Perro  del  Hortelano/  Many  a  theatrical  effect 
and  many  an  adroit  situation  that  he  employed  had  a 
Spanish  origin,  although  most  of  these  came  to  him  indi- 
rectly and  from  the  Italian  adaptations.  Possibly  it  was 
from  an  Italian  version  that  he  took  over  the  plot  of  *  Don 
Garcie';  and  certainly  he  used  an  Italian  arrangement  in 
shaping  'Don  Juan/  although  the  ultimate  originals  of 
both  plays  are  Spanish. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  these  borrowings,  obvious  and 
frequent  as  they  are,  Moliere  was  wholly  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  essential  qualities  of  the  Spanish  dramatists. 
He  might  find  his  profit  in  taking  from  them  adroit 
effects,  ingenious  situations  and  even  entire  plots;  but 
his  point  of  view,  his  attitude  toward  life,  his  artistic 
temperament,  never  resembled  those  of  the  peninsular 
playwrights,  since  he  was  always  primarily  interested  in 
the  realities  of  human  nature,  and  they  were  often  curi- 
ously unreal  in  their  grandiloquence  and  in  their  high- 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  53 

flown  heroics.  Here  he  stands  in  sharp  contrast  with 
Corneille,  whose  genius  was  more  or  less  like  that  of  the 
Spaniards.  Corneille  might  simplify  a  Spanish  plot  and 
thereby  strengthen  it  and  elevate  it  to  a  loftier  plane  of 
tragecty;  but  he  was  akin  to  the  authors  he  was  adapting 
in  that  he  delighted  in  the  romantic,  the  unusual,  the 
extraordinary  and  the  arbitrary.  But  this  artificiality 
and  this  emotional  tensity  were  wholly  foreign  to  Moliere' s 
genius,  which  relished  reality  and  which  sought  to  depict 
the  normal  rather  than  the  exceptional.  The  Spanish 

poets  jwere  almost  as  lyric  as  they  were  drama.tt'r^ they 

set  forth  violent-  expressions  of  individuality  and  made 
these  the  mainspring  of  their  stories;  and  in  so  doing 
they  stimulated  the  kindred  powers  of  Corneille.  Moliere 
was  not  lyric;  he  was  solidly  dramatic;  and,  above  all, 
he  was  a  true  Frenchman,  inheriting  the  Latin  tradition 
of  restraint  and  respecting  the  social  bond  which  represses 
undue  independence. 

In  reacting  against  Spanish  example,  Moliere  brought 
French  comedy  back  to  its  bearings  and  piloted  it  to  its 
future  victories.  His  predecessors,  Scarron  and  Cor- 
neille, had  been  taken  captive  by  the  Spaniards;  but  his 
successors  were  free  to  seek  for  comedy  where  it  has  its 
true  home,  in  society  as  it  actually  is,  and  in  the  essen- 
tially comic  struggle  of  character  with  social  condition. 
That  French  comedy  took  this  course,  which  was  its 
salvation,  and  that  the  comedy  of  every  other  modern 
literature  has  followed  its  lead,  was  due  mainly  to  the 
guidance  it  got  from  Moliere,  who  might  borrow  many 
things  from  foreigners,  but  who  stood  ever  steadfast  for 
those  qualities  which  have  made  French  art  what  it  is — 
clarity,  simplicity  and  sanity. 


54  MOLIERE 

IV 

From  no  foreigners  did  Moliere  take  over  so  much  as 
he  did  from  the  Italians,  with  whom  he  was  far  more  in 
sympathy  than  with  the  Spaniards.  But  even  his  bor- 
rowings from  the  Italians,  important  as  they  may  be, 
are  to  be  observed  rather  in  the  form  he  gave  to  his  more 
broadly  humorous  plays  than  in  the  content  of  his  ampler 
com&dies.  Yet  the  influence  of  the  Italians  was  as  bene- 
ficial to  him  as  it  was  deep  and  enduring.  He  wrould 
have  developed  into  a  comic  dramatist  even  if  the  Spaniards 
had  never  written  plays;  but  his  development  would  have 
been  entirely  different  if  he  had  not  early  mastered  the 
methods  of  the  Italian  comedy-of-masks.  It  was  from 
these  exuberant  fun-makers  that  Moliere  caught  the  knack 
of  telling  a  story  on  the  stage  with  unhesitating  liveliness. 
In  time  he  outgrew  their  simpler  art  and  he  engrafted 
on  it  a  wiser  humor  and  a  more  searching  presentation 
of  human  nature;  but  the  lesson  he  had  learnt  from 
them  lingered  long.  Only  once — in  the  'Misanthrope' — 
did  he  seem  to  forget  their  teaching;  and  this  was  to  his 
cost. 

The  improvised  play  of  the  Italians,  performed  by 
actors,  each  of  them  wearing  a  mask  and  a  costume 
which  identified  him  with  an  unchanging  character, 
always  the  same  in  every  play,  may  have  had  its  distant 
origin  in  the  rural  farces  of  the  Roman  villagers  in  the 
days  of  the  Republic.  It  survives  to-day  in  Italy,  more 
particularly  in  Naples;  and  it  has  bequeathed  its  types 
to  various  forms  of  the  drama  in  other  countries:  Pan- 
taloon, Harlequin  and  Columbine,  Punch  and  Judy, 
Polichinelle  and  Pierrot.  When  this  comedy-of-masks 
emerged  into  full  view  in  the  Renascence  it  revealed 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  55 

itself  as  a  very  special  type  of  play  presented  by  a  specially 
organized  company  of  players.  Italy  was  not  then  a 
unit;  and  the  inhabitants  of  the  several  cities  had  marked 
local  peculiarities  of  speech  and  of  character,  not  unlike 
those  which  we  now  personify  in  John  Bull,  Uncle  Sam 
and  Father  Knickerbocker — and  not  unlike,  again,  those 
familiar  figures  of  our  variety-shows,  the  stage-Irishman 
with  his  red  whiskers  and  his  abundant  brogue,  the  stage- 
German  with  his  broken  English,  and  the  stage-negro 
with  his  plantation  dialect.  In  the  Renascence  the 
typical  Venetian  was  a  merchant,  ever  ready  to  over- 
reach himself  in  his  greed  for  gain;  the  typical  Nea- 
politan was  an  artful  and  palavering  rascal;  and  the 
typical  citizen  of  Bologna,  which  was  renowned,  for  its 
university,  was  a  pedant,  whose  mouth  was  crammed 
with  Latin  quotations. 

An  actor  in  the  comedy-of-masks  chose  one  of  these 
types  and  made  it  his  own  for  life.  He  never  played  any 
other;  and  in  every  piece,  whatever  its  plot,  he  was  still 
the  ponderous  Bolognese  or  the  intriguing  Neapolitan. 
He  kept  always  the  same  name,  the  Doctor  or  Pulcinella; 
and  generally  he  wore  a  mask  over  the  upper  part  of  his 
face, 'a  device  which  served  to  emphasize  the  type  he  was 
impersonating.  The  old  women's  parts  were  taken  by 
men;  and  the  young  women,  Isabella  or  Leonora,  did  not 
wear  masks.  If  ten  or  twelve  of  these  actors  and  ac- 
tresses were  banded  together,  they  held  themselves  com- 
petent to  present  any  plot,  distributing  the  lovers'  parts 
to  the  younger  performers  and  the  older  characters  to 
the  Doctor  from  Bologna  and  to  Pantaleone  the  Vene- 
tian, while  the  servants  would  fall  to  the  lot  of  Pulcinella, 
the  Neapolitan,  and  of  the  actress  who  was  accustomed 
to  appear  as  his  partner  in  intrigue.  These  characters 


56  MOLIERE 

were  as  rigidly  fixed  in  appearance  and  in  mode  of  action 
as  the  king,  the  bishop,  and  the  knight  in  a  set  of  chess- 
men; and  yet,  as  in  chess,  with  these  unvarying  figures 
it  was  possible  to  obtain  results  of  inexhaustible  diver- 
sity. The  types  were  not  the  same  in  the  several  com- 
panies; in  fact,  there  seem  to  have  been  three  or  four 
score  of  them  visible  on  the  stage  at  one  time  or  another, 
some  of  which  died  with  the  originator,  while  some  be- 
came so  established  in  popularity  that  they  were  inherited 
by  a  younger  performer. 

Italians  are  born  actors;  and  they  have  also  the  gift 
of  improvisation.  Moreover,  every  one  of  the  performers 
had  accumulated  a  store  of  speeches  suitable  to  the  char- 
acter he  or  she  had  always  to  impersonate.  The  lovers 
had  a  score  of  ways  of  making  a  declaration  to  a  lady; 
and  the  ladies  were  furnished  by  long  experience  with  a 
score  of  ways  of  receiving  a  declaration.  The  zanni, 
as  the  low-comedy  actors  were  called,  Harlequin  or  Scapin, 
had  an  immense  repertory  of  jests  and  quips  on  which 
they  drew  incessantly  while  they  moved  through  the  in- 
tricacies of  the  comic  imbroglio.  The  deviser  of  a  new 
piece,  who  was  generally  also  the  chief  performer,  would 
call  the  actors  together  and  outline  the  plot  to  them, 
scene  by  scene,  distributing  the  personages  of  the  play 
as  best  he  could  among  the  members  of  the  company. 
He  would  also  draw  up  a  scenario,  a  detailed  summary 
of  the  story;  and  this  was  hung  up  behind  the  scenes, 
so  that  the  actors  could  consult  it  during  the  perform- 
ance and  refresh  their  memories  as  to  the  situations  in 
which  they  were  severally  to  take  part.  If  a  comedy-of- 
masks  met  with  unusual  success,  its  author  was  some- 
times encouraged  to  write  it  out  and  even  to  publish  it. 
Although  these  improvised  performances  were  particularly 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  57 

well  suited  to  the  quick-witted  and  vivacious  Italian 
comedians,  similar  attempts  are  recorded,  at  one  time 
or  another,  both  in  England  and  in  Germany,  and  also 
in  far-away  Hindustan. 

The  performers  of  the  comedy-of-masks  simplified  the 
problem  of  scenery  by  choosing  as  the  place  where  the 
action  of  most  of  their  <plays  was  supposed  to  pass,  an 
open  square  at  the  meeting  of  several  streets.  This  cus- 
tomary stage-setting  was  not  unlike  that  permanently 
installed  in  the  theater  at  Vicenza,  built  by  Palladio;  and 
two  similar  street  vistas  have  been  found  useful  in  the 
later  performances  of  the  Oberammergau  passion-play. 
As  the  zanni  were  often  acrobats,  able  to  amuse  the  audi- 
ence as  well  by  their  agility  as  by  their  wit,  the  houses  on 
these  streets  were  solidly  constructed,  so  that  the  per- 
formers might  scale  a  balcony  and  take  flying  leaps  through 
a  window.  In  one  or  another  of  these  houses  most  of 
the  characters  of  a  play  were  supposed  to  reside,  thereby 
giving  them  occasion  to  meet  in  the  square  as  frequently 
as  the  exigencies  of  the  plot  might  demand;  and  here 
the  actors  were  conforming  to  the  customs  of  southern 
Italy,  where  the  inhabitants  are  still  to  be  seen  carrying 
on  all  the  affairs  of  life  in  the  open  air, — talking,  eating, 
and  even  courting. 


It  is  no  wonder  that  this  unliterary,  unwritten,  impro- 
vised, semi-acrobatic  comedy-of-masks,  however  it  might 
please  the  populace,  was  contemned  by  the  fastidious 
scholars  of  the  Italian  Renascence,  who  held  Terence  to 
be  the  only  true  master  of  comedy.  Probably  they  de- 
spised it  all  the  more  because  of  its  popularity  with  the 


58  MOLIERE 

ignorant,  upon  whom  they  looked  down  with  contempt. 
Certainly  they  failed  to  perceive  its  merits  and  the  pos- 
sibility of  elevating  it.  They  preferred  to  compose  for 
their  own  delectation  imitations  of  Latin  comedy  in 
which  courtly  amateurs  could  appear  sporadically,  with- 
out seeking  the  suffrages  of  the  real  public.  Now  and 
again  a  play  by  one  of  these  men  of  letters,  the  'Man- 
dragora'  of  Machiavelli,  for  example,  had  genuine  comic 
force;  Taine  even  suggested  that  Machiavelli  might 
have  developed  into  a  Moliere,  if  circumstances  had  so 
willed  it.  But  it  is  the  special  quality  of  the  drama  that 
it  cannot  be  organized  on  any  aristocratic  basis;  the 
condition  of  its  vitality  is  that  it  shall  be  democratic  in 
its  appeal  to  all  classes,  the  ignorant  not  less  than  the 
cultivated.  Therefore  the  merely  literary  comic  drama 
essayed  by  these  dilettants,  "erudite  comedy,"  as  it  was 
called,  was  fated  to  be  sterile,  while  the  comedy-of-masks 
continued  to  flourish,  not  only  in  its  native  land  but  also 
in  France,  whither  it  had  been  transplanted  by  the  travel- 
ing companies. 

In  France  the  comedy-of-masks  had  profoundly  modi- 
fied the  methods  of  French  farce  long  before  Moliere 
left  Paris.  He  had  early  delighted  in  the  French  farce- 
actors  and  in  their  Italian  rivals;  and  during  the  years 
of  his  strolling,  chiefly  in  the  south,  where  the  Italian 
influence  was  strongest,  he  had  again  occasion  to  see  the 
merit  of  the  Italian  methods.  Himself  a  man  of  edu- 
cation, he  had  none  of  the  scholarly  aloofness  from  the 
populace  which  is  fatal  to  the  dramatic  poet.  He  did 
not  affect  to  disdain  what  the  ordinary  playgoers  ap- 
proved; he  was  like  Shakspere  in  his  willingness  to  begin 
by  giving  the  spectators  what  they  were  accustomed  to 
and  what  they  liked;  and  when  he  commenced  play- 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  59 

wright,  he  unhesitatingly  appropriated  plots  and  prin- 
ciples from  the  comedy-of-masks.  The  titles  of  half-a-  V 
score  of  the  unpretending  little  plays  which  he  prepared 
have  been  preserved;  and  they  all  of  them  suggest  an 
Italia^^pginal.  Two  of  the  little  pieces  have  them- 
selves rfn  replevined  from  oblivion  and  are  now  generally 
included  in  the  latest  ejiitions  of  his  works.  They  are 
the  'Medecin  Volant'  and  the  'Jalousie  du  Barbouille' 
(the  man  whose  face  is  smeared  with  flour). 

These  two  playlets  are  very  primitive  indeed  and  quite 
unoriginal;  and  yet  they  are  characteristic  in  their  humble 
way.  As  George  Sand  once  wrote  to  Flaubert,  "What- 
ever a  master  has  done  is  instructive,  and  we  need  not 
fear  to  exhibit  his  sketches  and  his  studies."  Neither  of 
the  little  plays  adds  anything  to  Moliere' s  reputation; 
they  are  at  once  too  slight  and  too  vigorous  in  their  humor. 
But  they  reveal  how  completely  he  had  accepted  the 
methods  of  the  Italian  improvised  play  and  how  skilfully 
he  had  mastered  them.  Both  pieces  are  in  absolute 
accord  with  the  traditions  of  the  comedy-of-masks.  The 
characters  are  fixed  types,  exactly  like  those  in  the  Italian 
pieces;  and  in  each  the  chief  of  them  is  an  intriguing 
servant  devised  by  Moliere  for  his  own  acting.  The 
story  is  but  a  thread  on  which  to  string  episodes  of  robust 
fun  and  violent  gaiety.  There  is  in  both  a  frank  sim- 
plicity of  exposition  and  a  swift  development  of  comic 
predicament.  The  dialogue  is  always  adequate;  it  brings 
out  fully  the  humor  of  the  situation;  but  it  is  devoid  of 
any  special  literary  quality — which  might  indeed  be  out 
of  place  in  pieces  of  this  elementary  sort.  It  was  owing 
to  the  success  of  these  Italian  imitations  that  Moliere, 
who  had  left  Paris  with  a  repertory  almost  wholly  tragic, 
was  able  to  return  with  comedies  and  with  farces  of  his 


60  MOLIERE 

own,  sufficiently  attractive  to  establish  the  new  company 
in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  older  theaters. 

For  Moliere  there  could  have  been  no  better  practice 
than  the  composition  of  these  imitations  of  the  Italian, 
in  which  there  was  incessant  movement  and/lfc  which 
speech  had  to  be  kept  secondary  to  actiorh^French 
comedy,  even  in  the  hands  of  Corneille,  was  then  a  little 
stiff;  it  tended  to  excess  of  mere  talk;  and  it  had  no  alert 
briskness  and  no  exuberant  gaiety.  Moliere,  as  some 
of  his  later  plays  were  to  show,  inherited  the  fondness 
of  the  French  for  abundant  discourse,  which  is  evident 
even  in  their  earlier  mysteries  and  miracle-plays,  which 
overwhelmed  their  later  tragedy,  and  which  survives  in 
their  problem-plays  of  the  twentieth  century.  It  was 
highly  profitable  for  him  to  be  convinced  by  experience 
of  the  supreme  value  of  situation  and  of  the  prime  im- 
portance of  lively  movement.  These  little  pieces,  not 
merely  the  two  that  have  chanced  to  survive,  but  also 
the  half-score  others  now  lost  to  us,  may  be  likened  to 
the  sighting  shots  which  an  expert  marksman  allows 
himself  before  he  undertakes  to  plump  his  bullets  into  the 
bull's-eye;  and  by  their  aid  Moliere  was  able  to  ring  the 
bell  with  absolute  certainty  when  he  attempted  his  more 
ambitious  five-act  comedies  in  verse. 


VI 

No  dramatist  was  ever  more  liberal  in  borrowing  from 
his  predecessors  than  Moliere,  except  Shakspere;  and 
no  dramatist,  except  Shakspere  again,  was  ever  more 
completely  original.  What  both  the  French  author  and 
the  English  took  from  their  predecessors  was  partly  the 
outer  form  of  the  play  that  had  proved  its  popularity, 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  61 

and  partly  the  bare  skeleton  of  story  and  situation.  What 
they  added  of  their  own  was  their  individuality,  their 
wisdom,  their  personal  outlook  on  life.  They  might  be 
lazy  as  far  as  mere  invention  went,  finding  their  profit 
in  suggestions  from  all  sorts  of  sources;  but  they  were 
active  enough  in  the  larger  interpreting  imagination 
that  sustained  and  trai>&figured  their  material. 

In  neither  of  the  comedies  which  Moliere  produced 
in  the  provinces  did  he  display  originality  of  invention 
in  the  construction  of  his  plot.  For  the  first  of  them, 
the  'Etourdi/  he  found  the  suggestion  of  his  story  in  an 
Italian  piece;  and  he  drew  on  other  Italian  pieces  for 
separate  episodes.  His  play  is  so  closely  patterned  on 
the  comedy-of-masks  that  it  might  be  selected  for  study 
as  the  best  possible  specimen  of  the  species.  It  has  the 
incessant  activity  of  the  Italian  farces,  their  sudden  rever- 
sals of  situation,  their  unfailing  gaiety,  their  spontaneous 
fun,  and  their  exaggeration  almost  to  caricature,  but  never 
to  burlesque.  Its  scene  is  laid  in  Italy,  at  Messina,  in 
the  public  square,  where  all  the  personages  can  come  and 
go  at  will.  Its  characters  are  fixed  types,  sharply  pro- 
jected and  highly  colored.  Its  plot  is  artificial  and  arbi- 
trary, in  which  the  same  situation  is  ingeniously  varied 
throughout  a  sequence  of  episodes.  It  is  wholly  unpreten- 
tious; its  sole  aim  is  to  evoke  laughter;  and  it  does  not 
aspire  in  any  way  to  arouse  thought. 

The  'Etourdi'  takes  its  name  from  its  hero,  Lelie, 
who  is  a  conceited  and  scatterbrained  young  fellow,  for- 
ever doing  the  wrong  thing,  often  from  a  right  motive. 
He  is  the  son  of  Pandolphe,  who  wishes  him  to  marry 
Hippolyte,  the  daughter  of  Anselme.  But  Lelie  is  in 
love  with  a  slave-girl,  owned  by  Trufaldin;  and  this 
Celiq  is  sought  also  by  Lelie' s  friend,  Leandre.  Lelie 


62  MOLIERE 

fortunately  has  for  a  valet  Mascarille  (the  part  Moliere 
devised  for  his  own  acting,  and  in  reality  the  central  figure 
of  the  play).  Mascarille  is  an  incomparable  rascal,  as 
ingenious  as  he  is  unscrupulous.  He  undertakes  to  get 
Celie  for  Lelie;  and  he  arranges  stratagem  after  stratagem 
to  put  the  willing  girl  in  his  master's  power.  But  no 
sooner  has  he  successfully  started  an  adroit  scheme  for 
bringing  the  lovers  together  than  the  babbling  and  blund- 
ering Lelie  upsets  it,  to  the  increasing  disappointment 
and  the  progressively  comic  disgust  of  Mascarille.  By  a 
report  that  Pandolphe  is  dead,  the  valet  extracts  money 
from  Anselme;  and  then  the  feather-witted  Lelie  lets 
the  spoil  be  taken  back.  Mascarille  provides  an  op- 
portunity for  carrying  off  Celie  during  a  masquerade; 
and  then  the  unthinking  Lelie  must  needs  warn  Trufaldin 
not  to  let  the  maskers  in.  During  the  five  acts,  nine 
several  enterprises  of  the  quick-witted  valet  are  wrecked 
by  the  chuckle-headed  master.  At  last,  when  Moliere 
has  got  all  the  fun  he  could  out  of  this  shifting  effect,  he 
abruptly  winds  up  the  comedy,  or,  at  least,  cuts  it  short, 
by  the  careless  expedient  of  a  recognition — a  discovery 
that  Celie  is  really  Trufaldin's  daughter,  and  therefore 
a  fit  and  proper  bride  for  Lelie.  So  Leandre  kindly 
pairs  off  with  Hippolyte;  and  the  play  is  done. 

With  such  a  story,  the  'Etourdi'  cannot  be  considered 
as  anything  but  farce,  in  which  situation  conditions  char- 
acter— whereas  in  true  comedy  character  creates  situation. 
The  figures  are  moved  before  us  not  by  their  own  volition, 
but  by  the  superior  will  of  the  playwright.  What  we  ad- 
mire are  the  dexterities  of  the  mechanism,  not  the  strokes 
of  nature.  The  author  is  seeking  to  arouse  the  emotions 
of  surprise  rather  than  to  awaken  the  emotions  of  recogni- 
tion. Its  humor  is  external  to  the  character;  and  it  arises 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  63 

solely  from  the  predicaments  in  which  they  are  placed. 
Moliere  was  doing  what  the  Italians  had  done  before, 
even  if  he  was  doing  it  more  cleverly.  Indeed,  clever- 
ness is  what  this  first  play  most  abundantly  displays, 
cleverness  for  its  own  sake.  So  Shakspere,  in  his  first 
comedy,  'Love's  Labor's  Lost,'  was  satisfied  with  an 
empty  theme  lending  itsjelf  to  the  parade  of  his  youthful 
wit.  The  'Etourdi'  is  like  'Love's  Labor's  Lost'  in 
that  it  is  the  early  effort  of  a  brilliant  young  writer,  who 
rejoices  that  he  is  young,  and  who  is  glad  that  he  can  be 
brilliant,  and  who  reveals  as  yet  no  sign  that  he  has  ob- 
served life  cautiously  or  reflected  on  it  deeply.  But  it 
discloses  his  easy  mastery  of  stage-craft;  he  has  already 
learned  his  trade  and  he  has  all  its  tricks  at  the  ends  of 
his  fingers.  He  is  no  longer  an  apprentice  in  play-making, 
/and  his  experience  in  putting  together  his  half-score 
little  farces  has  taught  him  how  to  build  a  plot  and  how  to 
maneuver  his  types  therein  with  instinctive  certainty. 

Yet  the  immediate  and  enduring  success  of  this  earliest 
of  Moliere' s  comedies  is  as  well  deserved  as  it  is  easy  to 
understand.  The  play  is  unpretending;  but  it  does  to 
perfection  what  it  purports  to  do.  It  is  captivating  in  its 
ingenuity;  and  it  is  irresistible  in  the  torrent  of  its  over- 
flowing animal  spirits.  It  is  animated  throughout  by  the 
superb  vitality  of  Mascarille,  who  joys  in  his  own  invent- 
iveness, carrying  everything  triumphantly  on  his  shoulders 
and  illuminating  everything  with  his  unquenchable  energy. 
And,  furthermore,  the  'Etourdi^has  greatjchainxof  style; 
it  is  written  with  a  variety  of  vocabulary,  a  flexibility  of 
expression,  a  full  flow  of  words  and  a  richness  of  rime,  that 
even  Moliere  never  surpassed,  and  that  extorted  the  ad- 
miration of  Victor  Hugo,  the  most  accomplished  of  experts 
in  all  matters  of  meter  and  of  rhetoric.  At  its  best, 


64  MOLIERE 

Moliere's  verse  is  ampler  and  more  vigorous  than  Racine's 
or  even  Corneille's;    and  in  the  'Etourdi'  it  is  at  its  best. 


VII 

The  'Depit  Amoureux/  the  second  of  the  five-act 
comedies  in  verse,  which  Moliere  brought  back  with  him 
to  Paris  after  they  had  approved  themselves  in  the  prov- 
inces, is  at  once  superior  and  inferior  to  the  'Etourdi/ 
It  is  inferior,  in  that  it  lacks  unity,  since  it  contains  two 
stories,  juxtaposed  rather  than  fused.  It  is  inferior  also 
in  that  the  main  story,  also  taken  over  from  the  Italian, 
is  less  simple  and  less  plausible  in  its  machinery.  This 
main  story  sets  forth  the  successive  situations  that  result 
because  a  father  had  sought  to  bring  up  a  girl  as  a  boy; 
and  it  is  not  only  less  acceptable  in  its  basis,  it  is  also 
less  profitable  in  comicality  of  episode.  Yet  the  later  play 
is  superior  to  the  earlier  in  the  subordinate  half  of  its  plot, 
which  gives  the  comedy  its  title  and  which  presents  to  us 
the  love-tiff  of  two  pairs  of  young  folks,  a  master  and  a 
mistress,  humorously  echoed  by  his  valet  and  her  maid, 
whose  pleasant  quarrel  is  only  the  reflection  and  reaction 
of  theirs. 

While  the  main  story  may  be  dismissed  as  an  unreal 
make-believe,  which  we  are  almost  ready  to  reject  for 
its  improbability,  the  secondary  story  is  delightfully 
truthful.  It  may  have  come  into  existence  by  itself  as 
one  of  the  little  farces  Moliere  had  earlier  devised,  and 
incorporated  later  in  the  more  ambitious  comedy  because 
its  author  was  certain  of  its  success.  Its  several  scenes 
are  the  first  fruits  of  Moliere's  insight  into  human  nature. 
They  may  have  been  suggested  to  him  by  a  scene  in  a 
play  of  Lope  de  Vega's  or  by  an  idyl  of  Horace's;  as- 


HIS  EARLIEST  PLAYS  65 

suredly  they  owe  nothing  to  any  Italian  example,  since 
they  are  founded  on  a  deeper  observation  of  life  than  the 
Italians  displayed  in  their  improvised  pieces.  This  sub- 
plot presents  the  eternal  commonplaces  of  young  love,  ever 
touchy  and  ever  self-torturing.  The  two  couples  meet 
and  flirt;  they  quarrel  and  part;  they  make  up  almost 
against  their  wills,  and  yet  in  accord  with  their  secret  in- 
clinations. And  this  presentation  of  the  course  of  true 
love  is  as  fresh  to-day  and  as  veracious  and  as  delicious 
as  it  was  two  centuries  and  a  half  ago. 

The  scenes  in  which  these  young  couples  appear  still 
ring  true,  whereas  the  other  half  of  the  comedy  is  hope- 
lessly antiquated,  since  it  belongs  to  a  formula  long  out 
of  fashion.  Very  wisely,  therefore,  has  the  Comedie- 
Francaise  cast  aside  that  part  of  the  play  which  is  no 
longer  interesting,  and  preserved  the  episodes  of  perennial 
charm.  For  more  than  a  hundred  years  now  the  'Depit 
Amoureux'  has  been  acted  on  the  stage  of  the  Theatre 
Francais  as  a  comedy  in  two  acts  and  not  in  five,  a  com- 
edy from  which  all  of  the  extraneous  matter  has  been 
cut  out,  leaving  only  the  wooing  and  the  bickering  and 
the  mating  of  the  two  pairs  of  lovers,  the  master  and  the 
mistress,  tender,  graceful,  and  almost  lyric  in  their  senti- 
ment, the  valet  and  the  maid  frankly  comic  in  their  equiv- 
alent misunderstandings  and  misadventures. 

With  these  two  comedies  Moliere  was  able  to  win  the 
favor  of  the  Parisian  playgoers  for  his  company,  and  to 
gain  for  himself  the  large  opportunity  for  his  own  en- 
suing development  as  a  dramatist.  Yet  there  is  little  in 
either  of  these  pieces  which  can  be  held  to  foretell  or  to 
prefigure  the  variety  and  the  range  of  that  swift  develop- 
ment. These  earlier  plays  revealed  no  more  than  that 
he  was  an  ingenious  playwright,  a  pupil  of  the  Italians 


66  MOLIERE 

who  could  better  their  instruction.  Even  if  the  love-tiff 
might  make  it  clear  that  Moliere  had  begun  to  study 
life  with  his  own  eyes  and  to  import  into  a  play  the  re- 
sult of  his  reflection,  the  two  comedies  taken  together 
show  chiefly  that  the  new-comer  had  a  vigorous  vocabulary 
of  his  own,  an  unerring  skill  in  handling  comic  situation 
and  a  hearty  sense  of  fun.  They  contain  small  promise 
of  his  future  mastery  of  comedy  in  its  highest  aspects. 
If  Moliere  had  died  in  that  first  winter  after  his  return 
to  Paris,  no  historian  of  French  literature  could  have 
suspected  the  loss  the  drama  would  have  sustained. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  'PRECIEUSES  RIDICULES' 

I 

ALTHOUGH  Moliere  and  his  fellow  actors  long  con- 
tinued to  appear  in  the  tragic  repertory  they  had  presented 
in  the  provinces,  these  performances  were  not  so  accept- 
able to  the  Parisian  playgoers  as  were  those  at  the  two 
older  theaters.  That  the  company  was  able  to  win  favor 
seems  to  have  been  due,  partly  to  the  popularity  of  the 
little  farces  which  were  played  as  after-pieces  to  the 
tragedies,  and  partly  to  the  immediate  success  of  Moliere' s 
two  longer  comedies,  the  'Etourdi,'  brought  out  in  No- 
vember, 1658,  as  soon  as  the  company  began  to  appear 
at  the  Petit-Bourbon,  and  the  'Depit  Amoureux,'  pro- 
duced for  the  first  time  in  Paris  in  April,  1659.  As  author, 
as  actor,  as  manager,  Moliere  bore  the  burden  of  the 
enterprise,  from  his  return  to  Paris  until  his  death. 

He  and  his  comrades  were  authorized  to  style  them- 
selves "the  company  of  Monsieur,  only  brother  of  the 
king,"  who  promised  them  an  annual  pension  of  three 
hundred  livres — a  subsidy  which  their  princely  patron 
always  omitted  to  pay.  The  actors  of  the  Hotel  de  Bour- 
gogne  were  entitled  the  "only  royal  company";  and 
those  of  the  Marais  theater  called  themselves  the  "  come- 
dians of  the  king."  It  is  evident  that  Moliere' s  company 
had  a  position  inferior  to  the  other  two,  who  were  more 

67 


68  MOLIERE 

directly  under  the  patronage  of  the  sovereign.  Perhaps 
this  was  one  reason  why  two  of  the  most  popular  players 
left  the  company  toward  the  end  of  their  first  winter— 
at  Easter,  which  was  the  season  when  theatrical  engage- 
ments were  made.  The  two  deserters  were  Du  Pare 
and  his  wife;  she  was  a  most  attractive  woman  who  re- 
ceived at  one  time  or  another  the  attentions  of  both  Cor- 
neille  and  Racine;  and  he  was  a  broadly  humorous 
comedian  known  as  "Gros  Rene." 

The  defection  of  the  Du  Pares  was  a  loss;  and  Moliere 
proceeded  to  strengthen  his  forces  by  engaging  another 
comic  actor  of  robust  fun,  Jodelet,  who  brought  with 
him  his  brother,  L'Espy.  About  the  same  time,  Du 
Croisy  and  his  wife  joined  the  company.  But  the  most 
important  recruit  was  La  Grange,  upon  whom  Moliere 
soon  learned  to  rely  and  to  whom  he  was  able  in  time  to 
confide  the  onerous  duty  of  acting  as  orator  of  the  com- 
pany. La  Grange  was  to  play  the  lovers  in  all  Moliere's 
later  plays;  and  he  must  have  been  a  most  accomplished 
actor  in  these  parts,  which  required  youth  and  ease, 
breeding  and  bearing,  gaiety  and  tenderness.  In  his 
private  life  he  was  resolute,  trustworthy  and  painstaking. 
It  was  he  who  piously  collected  Moliere's  plays  in  1682 
with  a  brief  biography  prefixed.  And  as  soon  as  he  joined 
the  company,  he  began  to  keep  a  register,  a  day-book 
of  the  doings  in  the  theater,  with  an  exact  record  of  re- 
ceipts, payments  and  profits.  This  register,  still  in  the 
possession  of  the  Comedie-Francaise,  is  the  basis  of  our 
solid  knowledge  of  the  remaining  years  of  Moliere's  life. 

At  the  end  of  this  first  season  at  the  Petit-Bourbon  the 
Italian  comedians  went  home,  leaving  the  theater  in  sole 
possession  of  the  new-comers;  and  at  the  beginning  of  his 
second  winter  in  Paris,  Moliere  was  able  to  shift  his  per- 


THE  'PRECIEUSES  RIDICULES'  69 

formances  to  what  were  considered  to  be  the  best  nights 
of  the  week,  Sundays,  Tuesdays  and  Fridays.  It  was 
early  in  this  fall  that  he  brought  out  his  third  play,  the 
'Precieuses  Ridicules,'  the  first  of  his  comedies  to  be 
produced  originally  in  Paris.  Its  success  was  immediate; 
and  the  profits  were  so  satisfactory  that  the  actors  in 
assembly  voted  a  preserft  of  five  hundred  livres  to  the 
author — as  La  Grange  has  recorded  for  us  in  his  invalu- 
able register. 

In  this  new  play  in  one  act,  which  seemed  to  be  only 
a  farcical  trifle,  we  discover  Moliere  turning  aside  from 
the  external  and  arbitrary  method  of  fun-making  which 
he  had  taken  over  from  the  comedy-of-masks.  For  the 
first  time  he  ventured  into  social  satire,  finding  a  fit  theme 
in  the  sayings  and  doings  of  a  feminine  cotery  then  in 
high  repute  throughout  France. 

II 

• 

The  term  precieuses  is  difficult  to  define  with  accuracy; 
but  it  was  applied  more  particularly  to  the  group  of  clever 
and  cultivated  women  who  were  in  the  habit  of  frequent- 
ing the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet.  The  Marquise  de  Ram- 
bouillet  was  a  woman  of  unusual  refinement,  possessing 
a  delicacy  of  taste  which  was  possibly  excessive.  She 
had  shrunk  from  what  seemed  to  her  the  rudeness  of  the 
court  of  Louis  XIII;  and  she  attracted  to  her  own  home 
the  more  polished  courtiers  and  the  more  presentable 
men  of  letters — Balzac,  the  letter-writer,  Voiture,  the 
rimester  of  familiar  verse,  Menage,  the  scholar.  She  and 
her  daughters,  these  nobles  and  these  wits,  with  a  little 
group  of  ladies  of  like  tastes,  including  Madame  de 
Longueville,  Madame  de  Sable  and,  later,  Mademoiselle 


70  MOLIERE 

de  Scudery,  Madame  de  Lafayette,  Madame  de  Sevigne, 
cultivated  conversation  as  a  fine  art,  setting  topics  for  talk, 
and  listening  to  poems  and  to  papers  prepared  expressly  for 
their  appreciation.  They  vied  with  each  other  in  the 
composition  of  madrigals,  of  maxims  and  of  written 
portraits.  They  strove  to  avoid  pedantry  and  to  cast  out 
vulgarity.  They  discussed  the  exact  use  and  meaning  of 
words,  rejecting  many  which  seemed  to  them  coarse, 
and  introducing  others  which  they  liked  better.  They 
held  council  over  points  of  grammar  and  rhetoric;  they 
desired  even  to  improve  orthography,  seeking  to  simplify 
French  spelling  by  dropping  the  useless  letters  which  do 
not  affect  pronunciation,  meaning  or  analogy. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  French  had 
been  considered  an  inferior  idiom,  almost  unworthy  of 
cultivation  and  incapable  of  expressing  accurately  and 
abundantly  anything  more  than  the  commonplaces  of 
daily  life;  but  by  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
when  Pascal  and  Corneille  and  Moliere  began  to  write, 
French  had  come  into  its  own;  it  was  accepted  as  a  rich 
and  varied  tongue,  fit  for  all  uses.  Its  improvement  had 
been  due  partly  to  the  group  of  poets  known  as  the  Pleiade, 
partly  to  Malherbe  (who  corrected  a  grammatical  error 
with  his  last  breath),  and  partly  to  the  exertion  of  the 
precieuses.  There  is  no  denying  their  influence  in  re- 
fining and  polishing  the  language  and  in  making  it  a 
better  instrument  of  social  intercourse. 

Equally  indisputable  is  the  influence  exerted  by  Madame 
de  Rambouillet  and  her  followers  in  the  amelioration  of 
manners.  It  was  in  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  that  there 
developed  the  Gallic  type  of  perfect  gentleman,  the  man  of 
gallantry  as  distinguished  from  the  more  Italianate  type 
of  the  courtier  which  had  preceded  it  and  made  it  pos- 


THE  'PRECIEUSES  RIDICULES'  71 

sible.  In  the  group  which  gathered  about  Madame  de 
Rambouillet  there  was  habitual  deference  to  the  gentler 
sex,  almost  a  deification  of  woman,  which  resulted  in 
giving  her  a  more  liberal  standing  in  society  than  she  had 
held  before.  Gentlemen  were  led  to  acknowledge  the 
spiritual  superiority  of  woman  and  almost  to  admit  also 
her  intellectual  equality. 

By  the  higher  position  allowed  to  women  and  by  the 
larger  share  they  were  encouraged  to  take  in  society, 
French  manners  were  purified  and  elevated;  and  in  so 
far  as  the  group  that  gathered  around  the  Rambouillets 
helped  to  bring  this  about,  its  influence  was  wholesome. 
The  language  also  benefited  by  the  action  of  this  cotery, 
which  helped  to  develop  the  latent  capabilities  of  French 
and  to  perfect  it  as  an  instrument  of  precision.  The 
desire  for  more  delicate  expression  and  for  decorative 
phrasing,  which  is  identified  with  the  precieuses,  did  not 
begin  with  them  nor  did  it  disappear  when  they  ceased 
to  be.  It  is  a  constant  force  in  French  literature,  an 
ever-present  reaction  against  that  other  French  relish  for 
frankness  of  speech,  girding  humor  and  Gallic  salt.  This 
latter  tendency  is  displayed  most  abundantly  in  Rabelais, 
but  it  is  visible  even  in  Montaigne;  whereas  the  former 
governs  not  only  the  letters  of  Balzac,  the  verses  of  Voiture, 
the  interminable  tales  of  the  Scuderys,  and  on  occasion 
even  the  tragedies  of  Corneille,  but  also  the  later  sermons 
of  Flechier  and  the  still  later  comedies  of  Marivaux,  in 
which  there  is  a  kindred  supersubtlety  of  sentimental 
analysis.  Even  in  Montesquieu  we  can  perceive  a  will- 
ingness to  be  witty  at  any  cost,  to  show  off,  to  subordi- 
nate substance  to  style.  And  a  similar  tendency  is  to  be 
detected  in  the  writings  of  the  Parnassians  and  the  Sym- 
bolists of  the  nineteenth  century.  Only  the  greatest  of 


72  MOLIERE 

French  writers,  Moliere  himself  and  Racine  after  him,  have 
been  able  to  make  their  profit  out  of  both  tendencies,  and 
to  combine  taste  and  vigor,  delicacy  and  freedom. 

The  movement  headed  by  the  precieuses  in  France  has 
its  analogies  in  other  literatures.  It  was  closely  akin  to 
the  Asianism  of  Greek,  to  the  Elizabethan  Euphuism 
and  to  the  Victorian  Estheticism  of  English,  to  the  Gon- 
gorism  of  Spanish,  and  to  the  Marinism  of  Italian.  In- 
deed, it  was  from  Italy  that  the  impulse  spread  to  France, 
since  Madame  de  Rambouillet  was  herself  half  an  Italian. 
She  seemed  to  have  shared  the  feeling  not  uncommon  in 
Italy  that  the  simple  word  is  too  simple,  lacking,  as  Stend- 
hal asserted,  "that  ingredient  of  pleasure  which  comes 
from  difficulty  conquered."  There  is  an  Italian  flavor 
in  the  enjoyment  which  the  precieuses  took  in  their  trivial 
toying  with  empty  conceits,  in  their  chase  after  metaphor, 
and  in  their  deliberate  search  for  unexpectedness  of  ex- 
pression. There  is  an  echo  of  the  Italian  Renascence 
in  their  distaste  for  plain  speech  and  for  the  plain  people, 
in  their  purism  and  their  pedantry,  obvious  even  at  the 
very  moment  when  they  believed  themselves  to  be  waging 
war  on  the  pedants  and  the  purists. 

Perhaps  also  the  Italian  influence  was  responsible  for 
the  pretentious  prudery  paraded  by  certain  of  the  leading 
precieuses.  Madame  de  Rambouillet  herself  was  often 
shocked  by  words  and  phrases  in  which  a  less  sensitive 
ear  could  perceive  no  impropriety.  Her  eldest  daughter 
had  a  maiden  modesty  so  excessive  that  it  postponed  for 
many  years  her  wedding  with  the  Duke  of  Montausier; 
and  yet  this  prudish  shrinking  from  a  fit  marriage  to  a 
devoted  suitor  did  not  prevent  her  later  complaisance  in 
facilitating  the  unlovely  intrigues  of  Louis  XIV,  first  with 
Mademoiselle  de  la  Valliere  and  afterward  with  Madame 


THE  'PRECIEUSES  RIDICULES'  73 

de  Montespan.  As  a  wise  humorist  has  declared,  "there 
are  no  people  so  vulgar  as  the  over-refined."  It  also  needs 
to  be  noted  here  that  two  of  the  earlier  precieuses  were 
Madame  de  Longueville  and  Madame  de  Sable,  whose 
efforts  to  reform  manners  were  without  effect  on  their  own 
morals. 

When  Moliere  broughtjmt  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules'  in 
1659,  the  vogue  of  the  cotery  was  declining,  if  it  was  not  ' 
already  decadent.     Nearly  half  a  century  had  passed  since  v 
Madame  de  Rambouillet  had  first  opened  her  house  to 
her  little  circle  of  followers;    and  her  daughter  had  with- 
drawn after  her  marriage  to  Montausier.     The  survivorsV 
of  the  clique  still  met  at  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery's,  but  the 
movement  had  seen  its  best  days  and  its  glory  was  de- / 
parting   forever.     Moreover,   it  had   been  vulgarized  by/ 
cheap  imitators  in  Paris  and  in  the  provinces.     There  was 
effort  and  affectation  enough  in  the  exercises  of  the  clever 
women  and  witty  writers  who  had  clustered  about  Madame 
de    Rambouillet;     and    these    unfortunate    characteristics 
of  the  movement  were  inevitably  exaggerated  almost  to 
caricature  by  those  who  copied  only  the  externals  without 
having  felt  the  original  impulse.     The  delicacy  of  taste  of 
Madame  de  Rambouillet  and  her  daughters  and  of  their 
friends  might  seem  at  times  a  little  over-sensitive;   but  in 
their    imitators,    who  lacked  the  real  refinement  of  the 
originals,  it  stood  revealed  as  a  parody  of  itself.     Copyists 
are  rarely  restrained  by  discretion;    and  the  copyists  of 
the  precieuses  distorted  language  and  manners  to  the  verge 
of  violence,  just  as  fashions  in  dress  lose  all  their  dis- 
tinction when  imitated  by  remote  villagers  with  no  sense 
of  style  and  with  no  feeling  for  the  fitness  of  things. 

For  ^ffeftati^n^j3f_jmy   kind,  in  language  or  in  life, 
Moliere  had  ever  a  profound  disgust.     He  disliked  purists 


74  MOLIERE 

as  well  as  puritans.  He  detested  any  insistence  upon 
outer  forms;  he  distrusted  it  as  a  disguised  attempt  to 
distract  attention  from  the  inner  spirit.  With  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  original  pr'ecieuses  Moliere  had  little  sympathy; 
and  some  of  their  practices  could  not  fail  to  arouse  his 
swift  sense  of  humor.  If  he  was  ready  to  smile  at- the 
originals  in  Paris,  the  antics  of  the  awkward  imitators 
in  the  provinces  must  have  evoked  his  frank  laughter. 
He  would  have  been  no  comic  dramatist  if  he  had  not 
seen  that  he  had  here  a  fit  topic  for  comedy.  He  seized 
Jrtthe  chance  to  expose  the  precieuses  to  ridicule,  just  as 
^\\  Shakspere  had  chosen  to  make  fun  of  the  euphuists. 

Ill 

We  can  understand  the  development  of  Moliere  as 
a  dramatist  only  when  we  keep  in  mind  the  fact  that  he 
was  also  and  always  the  manager  of  his  company,  the 
one  on  whose  shoulders  rested  the  duty  of  conducting 
the  enterprise  to  prosperity,  season  after  season.  Here  is 
the  explanation  of  his  clinging  to  the  formula  of  the  comedy- 
of-masks,  which  had  an  assured  popularity,  and  of  his 
frequent  utilizing  of  its  framework  and  its  fixed  types, 
and  of  his  returning  to  it  again  and  again  to  the  very  end 
of  his  career,  even  after  he  had  taught  himself  how  to 
construct  comedy  of  a  finer  kind  than  the  Italians  had 
ever  conceived.  He  had  begun  with  little  farces,  aiming 
at  laughter  only  and  wholly  without  pretensions;  and 
his  first  more  ambitious  comedy,  the  <  Etourdi,'  although 
in  five  acts  and  in  verse,  is  almost  as  barren  of  personal 
observation  of  life  as  these  farces  were,  however  ingenious 
the  larger  play  might  be  in  its  episodes  and  however 
abundant  in  humorous  situation.  Even  in  his  second 


THE  'PRECIEUSES  RIDICULES'  75 

comedy,  the  'Depit  Amoureux,'  the  skeleton  of  the  story 
is  still  Italian,  although  he  put  into  its  underplot  a  reality 
and  a  veracity  wholly  lacking  in  the  'Etourdi/ 

In  this  third  play,  the  Trecieuses  Ridicules,'  only  a 
farce  in  one  act  and  in  prose,  he  ventured  for  the  first 
time  to  deal  with  contemporary  manners.  It  was  the 
earliest  step  in  the  career  which  was  to  be  crowned  with 
the  'Femmes  Savantes/  For  the  first  time  he  chose  a 
theme  which  forced  him  to  that  criticism  of  life  which  is 
ever  the  mainspring  of  real  comedy.  Quite  possibly  it 
was  his  trained  instinct  as  a  manager  which  led  the  dram- 
atist to  see  the  attractiveness  of  a  topical  play  certain 
to  make  talk  and  to  lure  outlying  playgoers  to  the  theater. 
In  choosing  this  theme  he  could  make  sure  at  least  of  a 
success  of  curiosity. 

But  he  had  no  desire  to  break  with  his  past  and  to 
upset  the  expectations  of  his  audience  by  overt  novelty 
of  form.  So  he  retained  the  fixed  characters  of  the  comedy- 
of-masks,  appearing  himself  as  Mascarille,  the  voluble 
valet  already  seen  in  the  'Etourdi.'  The  scene  was  not 
laid  in  the  open  square  customary  in  Italian  pieces,  but 
in  the  house  of  Gorgibus,  who  had  come  up  to  Paris  with 
his  daughter  and  his  niece,  Madelon  and  Cathos,  the 
two  precieuses  ridicules,  provincial  imitators  of  Parisian 
originals^  Affecting  to '"be  snockecT  "Ey~~  the  straightfof- 
"ward  wooing  of  La  Grange  and  Du  Croisy — for  these 
actors  appeared  under  their  own  names  only — the  girls 
rejected  the  advances  of  their  lovers,  hoping  for  the  de- 
voted attentions  of  gallants  of  a  subtler  delicacy.  La 
Grange  and  Du  Croisy  decide  to  revenge  themselves 
by  sending  their  valets,  Mascarille  and  Jodeiet,  to  play 
the  gallants  that  the  girls  are  awaiting.  This  trick  is  like 
that  which  ruined  the  life  of  Angelica  Kaufmann;  it  has 


76  MOLIERE 

served  also  as  the  basis  of  'Ruy  Bias'  and  of  the  'Lady 
of  Lyons';  and  although  it  seems  rather  tragic  in  its 
possibilities  Moliere  chose  to  deal  only  with  its  comic 
aspects. 

Mascarille  presents  himself  as  a  marquis,  and  he  pro- 
ceeds to  captivate  the  two  damsels  by  his  intimate  acquaint- 
ance with  all  the  gossip  of  the  town,  by  his  knowledge 
of  the  jargon  of  the  precieuses,  by  his  unblushing  flattery 
and  by  his  imperturbable  assurance.  He  is  joined  by  his 
fellow  valet,  Jodelet,  masquerading  as  a  viscount.  Then, 
when  the  two  pretentious  young  ladies  have  been  fooled 
to  the  top  of  their  bent,  La  Grange  and  Du  Croisy  return 
and  unmask  their  servants,  forcing  the  fellows  to  strip 
themselves  of  their  borrowed  finery.  Jodelet,  after  taking 
off  his  coat,  has  to  remove  waistcoat  after  waistcoat — the 
same  primitive  device  for  provoking  laughter  that  used 
to  be  permitted  to  the  Second  Gravedigger  in  *  Hamlet,' 
and  that  probably  was  inherited  by  Moliere's  play,  as 
well  as  by  Shakspere's,  from  some  long-forgotten  medieval 
farce. 

%  The  plot  of  the  little  piece  is  nothing;  it  is  only  an 
excuse  for  the  talk  of  the  two  girls  and  of  the  two  valets — 
a  conversation  studded  thick  with  all  the  affectations 
of  the  precieuses.  But  Moliere  managed  to  avoid  the 
chilliness  of  merely  literary  satire  and  to  give  his  assault 
on  pretension  a  varied  and  vivacious  dramatic  form, 
holding  the  eye  as  well  as  the  ear.  The  little  play  has 
an  essential  struggle;  its  simple  structure  arouses  the 
interest  of  expectancy;  it  is  sustained  by  a  conflict  of 
contending  desires;  it  presents  that  clash  of  character 
on  character  which  is  ever  the  core  of  comedy.  Its  theme 
is  now  outworn,  for  the  literary  fashions  it  satirized  have 
long  faded  from  memory,  and  the  verbal  eccentricities 


THE  'PRECIEUSES  RIDICULES'  77 

of  the  precieuses  are  absolutely  unknown  to  the  playgoer 
o"f~To-cfay7  Yet,  after  two  centuries  and  a  half,  the  fun 
Cf1S|oli£re's  piece  is  almostjisfresh  as  ever;  its  aromlT 
is  as  pungent,  and  its  gaiety  is  as  irresistible.  Even  those 
who  have  never  heard  of  the  cotery  Moliere  held  up  to 
ridicule  are  now  carried  away  by  the  contagion  of  laughter, 
by  the  high  spirits,  by  Ae  sheer  fun  of  the  modern  per- 
formance. 

Of  course,  it^is  byjjjdroll  exaggeration  that  is  almost 
caricature  that  Moliere  made  manifest  the  absurdities 
of  those  he  was  exposing  to  laughter.  He  drew  in  bold 
outline  and  he  did  not  hesitate  to  lay  on  high  color.  After 
all,  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules'  is  only  a  farce — just  as  the 
'Comedy  of  Errors'  is  only  a  farce.  It  lacks  the  reserve 
and  the  sobriety,  as  it  is  also  without  the  elevation  and 
the  largeness,  of  his  later  comedies.  In  this  little  piece 
Moliere  revealed  for  the  first  time  the  union  of  his  triple 
characteristics — his  dramaturgic  dexterity,  his  inexhaust- 
ible humor,  and  his  hearty  detestation  of  pretense  and 
[nsincerity.  Although  it  was^oHIjTlTn  outcropping  that 
he  had  struck,  it  led  to  the  vein  of  true  comedy,  and  he 
had  only  to  persevere  to  uncover  the  rich  ore  of  the  sterling 
plays  that  were  to  follow.  He  succeeded  in  putting  into 
farce  a  veracity  and  a  significance  to  which  this  humble 
form  was  unaccustomed;  and  thereafter  his  plays  were 
to  be  as  comic  as  this,  but  the  best  of  them  were  to  call 
forth  a  more  thoughtful  laughter. 

IV 

Although  the  vogue  of  the  precieuses  was  passing  and 
although  the  cotery  was  no  longer  sheltered  in  the  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet,  its  members  were  still  alive,  in  cordial 
relation  with  the  chief  figures  of  contemporary  literature, 


78  MOLIERE 

and  closely  connected  with  people  in  power.  It  was 
a  proof  of  Moliere' s  daring  that,  even  at  the  beginning 
of  his  career  as  a  comic  dramatist,  he  did  not  shrink 
from  making  enemies  among  the  many  friends  of  the 
precieuses.  This  was  his  earliest  descent  into  the  arena 
of  contemporary  society,  where  he  was  to  fight  valiantly 
against  pretenders  of  all  sorts;  and  it  was  by  the  'Pre- 
cieuses  Ridicules'  that  he  began  to  arouse  against  him  the 
malignant  hostility  which  Was  to  pursue  him  to  the  grave. 
Any  attack  on  the  exaggerations  and  excrescences  of 
a  movement  cannot  fail  to  have  the  appearance  of  an 
assault  on  the  movement  itself,  since  contemporary  opin- 
ion is  rarely  able  to  disentangle  the  essential  from  the 
non-essential.  This  Moliere  could  not  help  knowing; 
but  it  did  not  daunt  him.  Indeed,  it  is  difficult  to  doubt 
/that  he  saw  plainly  what  he  was  doing  and  that  he  was 

/  well   aware   how  his   satire   came   home   to   the  original 

"^  precieuses  in  Paris,  even  if  it  seemed  to  be  aimed  solely 
at  their  provincial  copyists.  It  is  true  that  in  the  apolo- 
getic preface  to  the  play  when  he  printed  it,  he  took  pains 
to  explain  that  he  had  sought  to  keep  within  the  bounds 
of  permissible  satire,  asserting  that  the  most  perfect  things 
are  likely  to  have  vicious  imitators  who  have  always 
..been  the  fit  prey  for  ridicule.  He  declared  that  the  real 
precieuses  had  no  right  to  take  offense  at  his  parody  of 

N  their  extravagant  imitators,  any  more  than  a  truly  brave 
man  could  properly  resent  the  braggart  coward  who  was 
a  familiar  figure  in  Italian  comedy.  But  in  spite  of  all 
this,  we  may  be  sure  that  Moliere,  with  his  relish  for 
simplicity  and  with  his  hatred  of  insincerity,  had  no  real 

\  liking  for  even  the  least  pretentious  of  the  real  precieuses. 
Their  theory  of  literature  was  the  antithesis  of  his;  and  so 
was  their  theory  of  life.  He  was  willing  enough  to  have 


THE  'PRECIEUSES  RIDICULES'  79 

them  think  that  he  was  aiming  only  at  the  copyists;  but 
he  had  no  objection  to  see  his  shafts  flesh  themselves 
in  the  originals  who  stood  within  range. 

It  is  said  that  the  whole  cotery  attended  the  first  per- 
formance. One  of  the  most  sensible  of  them,  Menage, 
declared  that  he  took  another  of  the  group  by  the  hand 
as  they  all  came  out  of  the  theater  and  said  that  they  had 
both  of  them  approved  the  absurdities  which  had  just 
been  criticised  so  keenly  and  with  such  common  sense, 
and  that  now,  as  St.  Remi  had  said  to  Clovis,  "We 
must  burn  what  we  have  adored  and  adore  what  we  have 
burnt."  It  is  true  that  Menage  did  not  put  this  remark 
on  record  until  a  third  of  a  century  later,  a  score  of  years 
after  Moliere's  death.  It  is  true  also  that  some  other 
friend  of  the  precieuses  revealed  immediate  resentment 
and  succeeded  in  having  the  little  play  prohibited  at 
least  for  a  fortnight.  When  its  performance  was  again 
permitted,  the  rush  to  see  it  was  so  great  that  the  com- 
pany took  advantage  of  a  custom  of  the  time  and  doubled 
the  prices  of  admission. 

It  is  asserted  that  the  younger  daughter  of  Madame  de 
Rambouillet  was  always  a  partisan  of  Moliere's.  That 
Madame  de  Rambouillet  herself  did  not  bear  malice 
against  him  for  his  irreverent  audacity,  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  she  invited  him  later  to  perform  two  of  his  plays 
at  her  own  house.  The  scenery,  the  furniture  and  the 
properties  needed  for  the  proper  representation  of  a  play 
were  then  so  simple  that  performances  could  easily  be 
given  in  the  residences  of  the  dignitaries  of  the  court  on 
the  nights  when  the  company  was  not  acting  in  the  theater. 
Less  than  a  year  after  the  production  of  Moliere's  little 
play,  he  was  bidden  to  perform  it  before  the  young  king. 
In  his  invaluable  register  La  Grange  records  that  the 


8o  MOLIERE 

'Etourdi'  and  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules'  were  acted  at 
the  Louvre  before  Mazarin,  who  was  ill  in  his  chair. 
"The  king  saw  the  comedy  standing,  incognito,  leaning 
on  the  back  of  the  cardinal's  chair."  And  Louis  XIV 
was  so  much  pleased  with  the  performance  that  he  re- 
warded the  company  with  three  thousand  livres,  thus 
early  testifying  to  his  liking  for  Moliere,  both  as  actor  and 
as  author.  This  regard  may  never  have  ripened  into 
any  real  appreciation  of  Moliere' s  genius;  but  the  royal 
partiality  was  later  to  stand  the  dramatist  in  good  stead 
when  he  ventured  to  deal  with  more  dangerous  themes. 


Every  one  knows,  so  Voltaire  declared,  that  things 
of  little  value  may  make  a  success  on  the  stage,  although 
we  should  despise  them  in  the  study.  The  art  of  the 
dramatist  does  not  lie  wholly  within  the  limits  of  literature ; 
and  the  immediate  appeal  of  the  playwright  is  to  the  eyes 
of  the  spectators  and  to  the  ears  of  the  auditors  in  the 
playhouse  itself.  The  dramatist  is  like  the  orator  in 
that  he  is  often  satisfied  by  the  success  of  this  immediate 
appeal,  and  in  that  he  cares  little  for  the  increase  of  fame 
which  may  result  from  the  publishing  of  words  composed 
to  be  spoken  under  special  circumstances.  Bossuet  put 
into  print  only  one  of  his  powerful  sermons;  and  both 
Lope  de  Vega  and  Calderon  were  almost  as  careless  of 
purely  literary  reputation  as  Shakspere  was. 

Moliere  had  the  same  feeling.  He  had  not  published 
any  of  his  half-score  of  little  farces;  and  he  did  not  print 
either  the  'Etourdi'  or  the  'Depit  Amoureux'  until  several 
years  afterward.  He  had  no  intention  of  issuing  the 
'Precieuses  Ridicules'  as  a  book.  But  his  hand  was 


THE  'PRECIEUSES  RIDICULES'  81 

forced  by  a  piratical  publisher  who  made  ready  a  stolen 
£opy  of  the  piece;  and  in  self-defense  the  author  was 
obliged  to  give  his  little  play  to  the  press,  if  he  wished  to 
prevent  its  being  misjudged  by  a  mangled  perversion. 
In  the  clever  preface  which  he  prepared  for  it,  witty  and 
easy  in  its  modesty,  he  declared  that  it  was  a  strange  thing 
for  a  man  to  be  printed,  against  his  will.  He  asserted 
that  he  could  not  think  ill  of,  his  work  now  that  it  had 
been  praised  by  many.  But,  he  added,  "as  a  large  part 
of  the  charm  which  had  been  found  in  it  depends  on  the 
action  and  on  the  tone  of  the  voice,  I  was  greatly  con- 
cerned that  it  should  not  be  deprived  of  these  ornaments; 
and  I  found  that  the  success  it  had  had  in  the  performance 
was  quite  enough  for  me  to  be  satisfied  with  that." 

Whoever  may  have  had  the  privilege  of  seeing  Coquelin's 
performance  of  Mascarille  in  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules' 
cannot  fail  to  understand  Moliere's  feeling.  Amusing  as 
the  play  is  in  the  library,  it  is  far  more  amusing  in  the 
theater.  Moliere  had  written  the  chief  part  for  his  own 
acting;  and  he  had  controlled  and  trained  the  other  per- 
formers. Shakspere,  also  an  actor,  even  if  inferior  to 
Moliere  in  histrionic  equipment,  shared  Moliere' s  belief 
that  the  true  life  of  a  play  is  in  its  performance  and  that 
any  perusal  can  be  little  better  than  a  betrayal — at  least 
we  may  assume  that  this  was  Shakspere' s  opinion,  from 
the  fact  that  he  took  no  trouble  to  have  his  tragedies  and 
his  comedies  preserved  in  print.  It  is  partly  because 
they  were  both  actors  and  because  they  both  possessed 
a  mastery  of  the  allied  art  of  the  stage-manager,  that 
Shakspere  and  Moliere  reveal  "the  dramatic  force  that 
to-day  animates  their  works,"  so  Coquelin  once  asserted. 
"We  feel  that  these  plays  were  not  written  coldly  in  the 
silence  of  the  closet,  but  thrown  alive  upon  the  stage. 


82  MOLIERE 

This  explains  their  indifference  to  the  printing  of  their 
works.  They  did  not  recognize  these  on  paper.  'Tar- 
tuffe'  and  'Hamlet'  existed  for  them  only  before  the  foot- 
lights. It  was  there  only  that  they  felt  these  plays  to  be 
bone  of  their  bone  and  flesh  of  their  flesh/' 


CHAPTER  V 
FROM  'SGANAREI^LE'  TO  THE  'FACHEUX' 

I 

MOLIERE  produced  more  than  one  new  play  by  other 
authors,  but  few  of  them  proved  to  be  attractive  to  play- 
goers; and  it  was  due  solely  to  the  success  of  his  own 
comedies  that  the  company  was  able  to  establish  itself  in 
rivalry  with  the  two  older  organizations.  Its  membership 
remained  substantially  the  same  as  it  had  been  when  it 
returned  to  Paris.  La  Grange  had  taken  over  the  light- 
comedy  parts  previously  acted  by  Louis  Bejart,  who  had 
died  just  after  the  first  performance  of  the  'Etourdi,' 
in  which  he  had  appeared  as  the  blundering  hero.  Early 
in  1660  Jodelet  also  died;  and  his  broadly  comic  char- 
acters were  assumed  by  "Gros  Rene"  Du  Pare,  who 
returned  to  Moliere  at  Easter  with  his  fascinating  wife, 
after  having  spent  a  year  at  the  Marais  theater.  Thus 
reinforced,  the  company  was  probably  superior  to  either 
of  its  rivals;  certainly  it  was  incomparably  better  equipped 
for  comedy,  even  if  contemporary  opinion  continued  to 
consider  it  inferior  in  tragedy. 

It  was  then  the  custom  to  bring  out  the  more  serious 
plays  in  winter,  reserving  the  lighter  pieces  for  the  spring 
and  summer;  and  in  May,  1660,  Moliere  produced  his 
fourth  play,  another  one-act  comedy,  which  is  now  generally 
known  as  '  Sganarelle,'  the  name  of  the  character  imper- 
sonated by  Moliere  himself.  The  piece  is  little  more 

83 


84  MOLIERE 

than  a  farce,  wholly  without  the  richness  of  satire  which 
almost  raised  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules'  to  the  loftier 
level  of  comedy.  Its  fun  is  the  result  of  an  artful  yet 
arbitrary  plot,  not  derived  directly  from  any  Italian  play, 
but  still  retaining  the  rapid  movement  and  the  full  color 
of  the  comedy-of-masks.  Its  scene  is  that  customary  in 
the  Italian  pieces — an  open  street,  with  the  house  of 
Sganarelle  on  one  side  and  on  the  other  the  house  of 
Gorgibus.  Moliere  was  never  a  slavish  copyist  of  the 
Italians,  though  he  borrowed  from  them  the  briskness  of 
these  earlier  plays.  Their  actors  clung  each  of  them  to 
a  single  figure,  never  appearing  in  any  other  part.  But 
Moliere  now  changed  from  Mascarille  to  Sganarelle,  as 
he  was  later  to  change  to  Scapin.  Rather  should  it  be 
said  that  after  appearing  as  Mascarille  in  the  'Etourdi' 
and  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules'  he  returned  to  Sganarelle, 
which  he  had  impersonated  earlier  in  the  little  farce  of 
the  'Medecin  Volant.' 

The  reason  for  the  change  is  not  easy  to  declare.  It 
may  be  that,  as  he  was  now  thirty-eight  and  not  in  the  best 
health,  he  found  the  exuberant  buoyancy  of  Mascarille 
too  fatiguing.  It  may  be  that  he  was  merely  seeking  for 
variety,  fearing  to  weary  his  audiences  by  too  insistent  a 
reappearance  of  the  same  fixed  type.  It  seems  more  likely, 
however,  that  he  wanted  a  richer  character  for  his  own 
acting.  Mascarille  is  the  cleverest  of  intriguers;  but  he 
is  only  a  deviser  of  tricks,  the  number  of  which  is  limited, 
whereas  Sganarelle  is  a  fool,  and  there  is  no  end  to  the 
multiplicity  of  ways  in  which  folly  may  be  revealed. 
It  must  be  noted  also  that  Mascarille,  however  brilliant 
he  might  be,  was  always  playing  jokes  on  others;  and 
on  the  stage  it  is  not  the  victimizer  but  the  victim,  the 
butt,  who  has  the  broader  scope  for  acting. 


FROM  'SGANARELLE'  TO  THE  'FACHEUX'  85 

In  this  play  Sganarelle  is  his  own  butt,  the  victim  of 
his  own  blunders,  led  by  chance  to  deceive  himself  into  a 
belief  in  the  infidelity  of  his  wife.  Gorgibus  (whose 
function  in  this  piece  is  very  much  what  it  had  been  in 
the  'Precieuses  Ridicules,'  merely  to  be  a  father)  has  a 
daughter  Celie,  who  is  in  love  with  Lelie,  characters  not 
unlike  those  bearing  the  fame  names  in  the  'Etourdi'— 
another  resemblance  to  the  fixed  types  of  the  comedy-of- 
masks.  Gorgibus  tells  his  daughter  that  he  wishes  her 
to  marry  the  son  of  an  old  friend.  Celie  is  so  overcome 
by  this  that  she  almost  faints,  dropping  a  portrait  of 
Lelie.  The  wife  of  Sganarelle  finds  the  picture  and  ad-  | 
mires  it,  which  leads  her  husband  to  believe  that  she  is 
in  love  with  the  original.  When  Lelie  comes  on  the  stage, 
accompanied  by  his  valet,  Gros  Rene,  Sganarelle  recog- 
nizes him  and  tells  him  that  the  woman  who  had  possession 
of  the  portrait  is  Sganarelle' s  wife,  which  makes  the  lover 
as  angry  as  the  husband  is  jealous.  In  time  everybody 
is  at  cross-purposes,  Sganarelle  confirmed  in  his  distrust 
of  his  wife,  who  is  also  suspicious  of  him,  while  Lelie  and 
Celie  are  each  of  them  convinced  that  they  have  been 
deceived  in  the  other.  And  when  Moliere  has  extracted 
all  possible  fun  out  of  this  prolonged  equivoke,  every- 
thing is  swiftly  made  clear;  the  old  friend  of  Gorgibus 
turns  up  at  the  right  moment  to  explain  that  his  son 
has  contracted  a  secret  marriage,  whereupon  Gorgibus 
promptly  consents  to  the  wedding  of  Celie  and  Lelie; 
and  Sganarelle  brings  the  piece  to  an  end  by  warning  all 
husbands  not  to  be  suspicious. 

*  Sganarelle'  is  as  unassuming  as  it  is  amusing;  and 
it  was  long  the  most  popular  of  all  Moliere's  plays,  pro- 
voking continuous  laughter,  generation  after  generation. 
But  except  in  a  single  particular  it  marks  no  advance  on 


86  MOLIERE 

Moliere's  part.  The  plot  is  adroit  yet  artificial,  the  per- 
sonages are  drawn  in  outline  only,  without  subtlety  or 
depth — at  least,  with  the  sole  exception  of  Sganarelle 
himself.  In  this  character  Moliere  first  undertook  the 
analysis  of  a  passion,  the  ugly  passion  of  jealousy,  which 
recurs  again  and  again  in  his  later  plays.  In  this  earliest 
attempt  Moliere  presents  only  the .  more  comic  aspects 
of  jealousy;  yet  the  sufferings  of  Sganarelle  are  sincere, 
even  if  they  are  both  needless  and  exaggerated.  The 
spectators  know  that  Sganarelle  is  foolishly  self-deceived; 
they  are  aware  that  there  is  no  solid  foundation  for  his 
misery;  they  laugh  at  him  abundantly  and  incessantly; 
and  yet  he  wins  something  of  their  sympathy  and  he  retains 
it  in  spite  of  his  persistent  folly.  The  laughter  of  the 
audience  is  aroused  by  character  as  well  as  by  situation; 
and  this  is  evidence  that  Moliere  was  making  ready  for 
his  riper  work.  Yet  there  is  in  *  Sganarelle'  scarcely  a 
suggestion  of  the  deeper  aspects  of  his  humor  and  hardly 
a  hint  of  the  melancholy  that  underlay  it. 

II 

Not  long  after  'Sganarelle'  had  strengthened  the  hold 
of  Moliere's  company  on  the  Parisian  playgoers,  their 
career  came  near  being  cut  short  in  spite  of  their  pros- 
perity. They  found  themselves  unexpectedly  and  un- 
ceremoniously turned  out  of  the  playhouse  the  king  him- 
self had  allotted  to  them.  There  had  long  been  a  project 
on  hand  for  the  reconstruction  of  the  Louvre;  and  in 
October,  1660,  without  any  warning,  the  royal  superin- 
tendent of  buildings  began  to  tear  down  the  theater  of 
the  Petit-Bourbon.  There  was  neither  reason  for  haste 
nor  excuse  for  the  discourtesy  of  not  giving  Moliere  ample 


FROM  'SGANARELLE'  TO  THE  TACHEUX'  87 

time  to  make  other  arrangements.  It  is  impossible  not 
to  suspect  ill-will  and  an  intention  to  inconvenience  in 
this  needlessly  sudden  dismantling  of  the  playhouse 
assigned  to  Moliere  and  his  comrades.  Probably  the 
court  functionary  was  gratifying  the  grudge  of  officious 
friends  of  the  pr'ecieuses  or  aiding  the  acute  animosity  of 
rival  actors. 

Whatever  the  motive,  this  attempt  to  injure  Moliere 
turned  to  his  advantage.  At  the  request  of  Monsieur, 
the  patron  of  the  company,  Louis  XIV  graciously  gave  it 
permission  to  take  possession  of  the  theater  in  the  Palais- 
Royal,  the  sumptuous  hall  built  by  Richelieu  regardless 
of  cost  for  the  performance  of  'Mirame/  the  tragedy  he 
had  himself  inspired.  This  theater,  far  more  spacious 
than  that  in  the  Petit-Bourbon,  had  fallen  out  of  repair; 
and  the  superintendent  of  the  royal  buildings  was  or- 
dered to  make  amends  to  Moliere  by  putting  it  in  order 
as  speedily  as  possible.  The  actors  were  allowed  to 
remove  from  their  old  playhouse  to  their  new  home  the 
boxes  and  other  appurtenances  necessary  for  their  en- 
terprise. 

The  repairs  consumed  three  months,  during  which  time 
the  company  was  deprived  of  its  domicile.  It  made  out 
as  best  it  could,  giving  many  performances  before  the 
king  and  in  the  private  houses  of  the  nobility;  but  this 
must  have  been  a  period  of  perplexity  and  impoverish- 
ment, since  the  company  had  to  forego  its  regular  takings 
at  the  door.  Its  members  received  flattering  proposals 
to  desert  to  one  or  the  other  of  the  older  organizations, 
that  at  the  Marais  and  that  at  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne; 
but  their  loyalty  to  their  leader  led  them  to  decline  these 
offers.  The  devoted  La  Grange  recorded  in  his  register 
the  result  of  these  maneuvers:  "The  whole  company  kept 


MOLIERE 

)gether;  all  the  actors  loved  the  Sieur  de  Moliere,  their 
chief,  who  united  to  an  extraordinary  merit  and  capacity, 
an  honesty  and  an  engaging  manner  which  compelled 
them  all  to  protest  to  him  that  they  wished  to  share  his 
fortune  and  that  they  would  never  quit  him,  whatever 
proposal  might  be  made  to  them  and  whatever  advantages 
they  could  find  elsewhere."  It  is  touching  to  find  this 
heartfelt  appreciation  in  what  is  really  a  day-book,  in- 
tended mainly  for  the  recording  of  receipts  and  profits. 

Only  in  January,  1661,  was  the  company  able  to  give 
its  first  performance  in  the  Palais-Royal.  It  began  with 
a  double  bill,  composed  of  two  of  Moliere' s  comedies, 
the  ever-popular  'Depit  Amoureux'  followed  by  the  more 
novel  '  Sganarelle. '  The  spaciousness  of  the  theater 
where  Moliere  was  to  act  during  the  remaining  twelve 
years  of  his  life  can  be  gaged  by  the  fact  that  it  was  to 
shelter  the  Opera  for  a  century  after  Moliere's  death. 
The  hall  was  a  double  square,  a  little  more  than  fifty 
feet  wide  and  a  little  more  than  a  hundred  feet  long. 
There  were  two  galleries  on  each  side,  one  above  the  other. 
The  level  space  immediately  in  front  of  the  stage  was 
called  the  parterre,  where  some  three  hundred  spectators 
could  find  standing  room.  Behind  the  parterre  the  floor 
rose,  step  by  step;  and  it  had  benches  running  in  straight 
lines  from  one  side-wall  to  the  other.  The  house  was  very 
badly  lighted,  both  before  and  behind  the  curtains.  Tallow 
candles  were  the  sole  means  of  illumination;  and  they 
had  to  be  snuffed  frequently  during  the  performances. 
There  were  no  footlights;  in  their  stead  were  chande- 
liers suspended  a  foot  or  so  above  the  heads  of  the  actors, 
upon  whom  awkward  shadows  must  have  been  cast. 

With  the  stage  in  semi-darkness  and  without  the  aid 
of  the  modern  opera-glass  it  was  not  easy  to  follow  the 


FROM  'SGANARELLE'  TO  THE  TACHEUX'  89 

changing  expression  on  the  faces  of  the  performers. 
Most  of  the  fourteen  or  fifteen  hundred  spectators  must 
have  strained  their  eyes  in  vain.  Probably  this  is  one 
reason  why  the  lovers  of  acting  liked  the  privilege  of 
sitting  on  the  stage,  for  which  a  higher  price  was  charged. 
The  straw  chairs  of  these  intruding  spectators  filled  the 
two  sides  of  the  stage  for  perhaps  fifteen  feet  back  of  the 
curtain.  As  the  scenery  immediately  behind  them  could 
never  be  used,  since  they  blocked  all  approach  to  it,  it 
seems  probable  that  the  first  and  second  wings  were 
permanent  and  purely  architectural  in  character,  con- 
tinuations of  the  proscenium  arch.  If  this  was  so,  the 
scenery  appropriate  to  the  play  which  was  being  per- 
formed would  extend  from  the  third  wing  to  the  back- 
cloth.  The  actors  were  expected  to  come  forward  into 
the  neutral  ground  between  the  two  groups  of  spectators 
on  the  sides  of  the  stage  and  to  play  the  more  important 
scenes  of  the  comedy  as  close  to  the  chandeliers  as  possible. 
This  practice  prevented  the  playwright  from  relying  on 
properties  or  on  furniture.  It  deprived  him  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  relating  character  to  environment  in  the  mod- 
ern fashion.  And  it  exerted  a  constant  pressure  on  the 
dramatist  to  subordinate  essential  action  to  mere  con- 
versation. 

The  audience  was  supposed  not  to  see  the  spectators 
on  the  stage — just  as  the  Japanese  playgoer  of  to-day 
disregards  the  silent  attendants  clad  in  black  who  steal 
forward  to  tidy  up  and  to  hand  whatever  the  performers 
may  require.  But  in  Paris  in  Moliere's  time,  as  in  Lon- 
don in  Shakspere's,  this  theatrical  convention  was  rudely 
broken  when  these  spectators  on  the  stage  talked  to  each 
other  so  loudly  that  the  leading  actor  had  to  interrupt 
the  play  to  call  them  to  order.  Nor  was  disorder  confined 


QO  MOLIERE 

to  those  sitting  behind  the  curtain;  often  it  extended  to 
those  who  had  to  stand  in  the  parterre.  It  was  long 
after  Moliere's  death  before  every  spectator  was  provided 
with  a  seat,  thus  avoiding  the  occasional  disturbance 
always  likely  to  occur  when  men  are  kept  standing  for  two 
or  three  hours,  jostling  each  other  in  the  effort  to  see  and 
to  hear. 

Ill 

All  these  earlier  plays  of  Moliere  were  tentative;  and 
we  can  now  perceive  that  he  was  feeling  his  way  a  little 
doubtfully  to  a  larger  and  nobler  form  of  comedy,  for 
which  he  had  no  model  in  any  modern  literature  or  even 
in  the  classics.  And  then  he  turned  from  the  Italians 
fto  the  Spaniards.  Corneille  and  Scarron  had  received 
inspiration  from  the  playwrights  of  the  more  western 
peninsula;  and  Spain  was  once  more  in  fashion  at  the 
court,  since  the  king  had  just  married  a  Spanish  wife. 
A  company  of  Spanish  actors  had  recently  arrived  and 
had  played  both  before  the  king  and  at  the  Petit-Bourbon. 
The  younger  Corneille  was  pleasing  the  public  with 
tragi-comedies  often  Spanish  in  origin  and  generally 
Spanish  in  flavor.  So  in  February,  1661,  Moliere  brought 
out  'Don  Garcie,  ou  le  Prince  Jaloux,'  which  he  called 
a  heroic-comedy,  but  which  really  belongs  to  the  hybrid 
type  known  as  tragi-comedy,  a  drama  with  a  serious  plot 
and  yet  a  happy  ending. 

'Don  Garcie'  is  a  long-drawn  piece  in  five  acts,  in 
polished  verse,  setting  forth  the  transports  of  the  hero's 
self-deceived  and  self-torturing  jealousy,  rendered  with 
acute  insight  into  his  sufferings.  But  the  story  is  thin  and 
strained,  dealing  as  it  does  with  Don  Garcie's  suspicion 
of  a  woman  in  male  attire  and  with  a  supposed  rival 


FROM  'SGANARELLE'  TO  THE  TACHEUX'  91 

turning  out  to  be  the  heroine's  brother.  There  is  warm 
and  genuine  feeling  beneath  the  sonorous  declamation, 
phrased  in  the  frigid  vocabulary  of  contemporary  gal- 
lantry, and  there  is  subtle  analysis  of  sentiment.  But 
Moliere  did  not  display  here  the  lyricism  demanded  by  a 
drama  of  this  kind.  His  genius  could  flower  abundantly 
only  when  it  had  its  roots  in  reality;  and  tragi-comedy, 
however  highly  colored  it  might  be,  was  an  orchid.  He 
was  not  at  ease  in  the  exalted  artificial  fictions  which  lesser 
men  could  handle  more  profitably.  He  needed  the  con- 
crete, the  close  grip  on  life  as  he  saw  it  with  his  own  eyes, 
keen  to  pierce  below  the  surface.  At  his  best  he  was  not 
a  lyric  poet,  but  a  burgher  of  Paris,  dealing  with  the 
problems  of  life  and  character  in  straightforward  fashion, 
sincerely  and  directly. 

Every  one  of  us  is  necessarily,  even  if  unconsciously, 
either  a  Platonist  or  an  Aristotelian,  an  idealist  or  a  realist. 
It  is  true  that  an  idealist,  with  a  firm  hold  on  things  as 
they  are,  is  separated  by  no  wide  gulf  from  a  realist,  who 
has  a  deep  appreciation  of  the  mysteries  of  existence;  and 
yet  the  gulf  is  ever  too  broad  to  be  bridged.  Moliere, 
beyond  all  question,  was  a  realist,  however  much  he  may 
have  brooded  over  the  darker  aspects  of  humanity.  Al- 
though he  could  lift  himself  far  above  the  externals  of 
every-day  life  he  was  not  essentially  lyric;  in  fact,  he  could 
not  fail  to  feel  a  certain  distrust  of  the  lyric  mood  with  its 
basis  of  overt  self-expression  and  excessive  individualism. 
He  was  not  only  a  realist,  he  was  a  humorist  above  all  else, 
perhaps  the  greatest  of  modern  humorists;  and  'Don 
Garcie'  is  almost  barren  of  laughter.  In  composing  that 
heroic-comedy  Moliere  entered  a  blind  alley;  perhaps  it 
was  fortunate  for  him  that  the  piece  did  not  please,  for  the 
failure  forced  him  back  into  the  straight  road  that  was  to 


92  MOLIERE 

•  lead  to  his  comic  masterpieces.     It  was  his  first  disaster; 
and  it  was  to  be  his  last. 

That  it  did  not  please  the  public  is  proved  by  its  with- 
drawal after  only  seven  performances.  That  Moliere 
took  this  hard  and  hoped  in  vain  for  a  reversal  of  the 
verdict  is  revealed  by  his  presenting  the  play  the  next  year 
before  the  king,  and  the  year  after  before  Conde,  and 
again  before  the  king,  and  by  his  attempting  to  revive 
it  at  the  Palais-Royal  in  1663,  when  he  had  to  withdraw 
it  finally  after  the  second  performance.  Then  he  gave 
up  the  fight  and  accepted  the  decision.  He  did  not 
publish  the  play,  although  he  had  taken  out  a  permission 
to  print  it.  He  put  it  away;  and  when  the  public  had 
completely  forgotten  it — and  nothing  slips  from  men's 
memories  more  swiftly  than  an  unsuccessful  drama- 
he  went  back  to  it  for  passages  which  he  was  able  to 
utilize  in  later  comedies,  notably  in  the  '  Misanthrope/ 

It  must  be  recorded  also  that  'Don  Garcie'  was  for 
i  Moliere  a  double  failure — as  an  actor  as  well  as  an  author. 
He  had  written  the  chief  part  for  himself;  and  perhaps 
his  success  in  portraying  the  jealousy  of  Sganarelle  may 
have  led  him  to  believe  that  he  would  be  favorably  received 
when  he  depicted  the  jealousy  of  Don  Garcie.  But  if 
this  had  been  his  calculation  it  was  an  error,  for,  although 
Sganarelle  must  be  acted  with  intense  seriousness  if  it  is 
to  be  effective,  the  result  is  intentionally  comic;  whereas 
the  appeal  of  Don  Garcie  is  solely  to  the  sympathy  of  the 
spectators,  and  even  a  hint  of  laughter  would  be  fatal. 
.Probably  also  this  first  appearance  of  Moliere  in  a  serious 
part  in  one  of  his  own  plays  disappointed  the  audiences 
he  had  trained  to  smile  as  soon  as  he  showed  his  face  on 
the  stage.  Only  by  successive  steps  can  an  actor  long 
welcomed  as  a  laugh-maker  get  the  playgoers  to  accept 


FROM  'SGANARELLE'  TO  THE  'FACHEUX'  93 

him  in  more  heroic  characters;  and  Moliere's  change  from 
the  comic  to  the  serious  was  too  sudden  not  to  be  dis- 
concerting. Moreover,  Moliere  as  an  actor  strove  always 
to  be  simple  and  natural  and  to  avoid  the  over-emphasis 
and  mouthing  to  which  the  tragedians  of  his  time  were 
accustomed.  But  if  he  applied  his  theory  severely  in  his 
own  acting  of  Don  Garcie,  he  was  violating  the  sound 
principle  that  every  play  must  be  presented  in  accord 
with  its  spirit.  'Don  Garcie'  itself  is  not  simple  and 
natural;  it  demanded  a  bravura  method  of  acting,  a 
more  flamboyant  manner  than  Moliere  was  probably 
willing  to  give  it. 


IV 

In  spite  of  Moliere's  disappointment  at  the  failure  of 
his  tragi-comedy  he  was  not  discouraged;  he  soon  made 
ready  another  piece  more  in  accord  with  the  anticipations 
and  preferences  of  his  audiences.  The  'Ecole  des  Maris/ 
a  three  act  comedy  in  verse,  brought  out  in  June,  1661, 
met  with  instant  success  and  it  has  retained  its  popularity 
to  this  day.  It  was  frankly  comic  and  it  contained  a 
frankly  comic  character  for  his  own  acting.  The  story 
;is  original,  although  he  made  use  of  hints  from  Boccaccio 
|and  perhaps  also  from  Lope  de  Vega.  The  plots  of 
Moliere's  own  devising  are  generally  better  than  those 
he  borrowed — easier  in  their  construction,  and  without 
the  stiffness  sometimes  retained  in  those  he  took  over 
ready-made.  In  this  *play  he  availed  himself  also  of  a 
suggestion  which  he  found  in  Terence,  who  had  derived 
it  from  Menander — the  contrast  of  two  brothers  bringing 
up  two  wards,  boys  in  the  Latin  comedy,  girls  in  the 
French.  Moliere  had  studied  Terence  at  school — just 


94  MOLIERE 

as  Shakspere  had  possibly  read  Seneca  at  Stratford; 
he  may  have  even  taken  part  in  a  performance  of  the 
'Adelphi'  when  he  was  a  pupil  of  the  Jesuits.  The 
impression  made  upon  him  by  his  study  of  Plautus  and 
Terence  is  as  evident  in  certain  of  his  later  plays  as  the 
influence  of  the  Italian  improvisers  upon  his  earlier  pieces. 
Original  as  it  is  in  plot,  the  'Ecole  des  Maris'  is  cast 
in  the  familiar  form  of  the  comedy-of-masks,  with  its 
fixed  types,  the  lover  and  his  valet,  the  pair  of  pretty  girls, 
and  the  outspoken  serving-maid — a  figure  Moliere  was 
often  to  employ  again.  He  appeared  himself  as  Sgan- 
arelle,  for  the  second  time,  modifying  the  character  to 
suit  the  new  story,  just  as  Mascarille  had  been  modified 
a  little  to  play  his  part  in  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules/  So 
Falstaff  is  somewhat  changed  to  fit  into  the  intrigue  of  the 
'Merry  Wives';  and  so  Creon  differs  in  the  several  plays 
of  Sophocles  in  which  he  appears.  One  character  only, 
Ariste,  the  elder  and  more  tolerant  brother  of  Sganarelle, 
\  has  no  relation  to  any  of  the  fixed  types  of  the  Italians. 
Ariste  is  a  burgher  of  Paris,  the  earliest  of  those  embodi- 
ments of  sturdy  common  sense  whom  Moliere  was  fre- 
quently thereafter  to  introduce  into  his  plays,  to  serve 
i  on  occasion  as  the  mouthpiece  of  his  own  sentiments  and 
to  afford  a  contrast  to  the  more  violent  opinions  voiced 
by  the  more  strongly  marked  humorous  characters.  Ariste 
is  an  example  of  that  burgher  sobriety  which  Moliere 
knew  intimately  from  his  youth  up  and  which  supplied 
France  with  administrators  like  Colbert  and  with  poets 
like  Boileau,  La  Fontaine  and  Racine.  It  is  in  this  bur-- 
gher  class  that  Moliere  now  began  to  seek  subjects  for 
comedy,  reserving  always  the  right  to  return  to  the  large 
liberty  of  the  comedy-of-masks  whenever  he  was  moved 
to  compose  a  play  intended  chiefly  to  provoke  laughter. 


FROM  'SGANARELLE'  TO  THE  TACHEUX'  95 

Even  Sganarelle  becomes  more  than  the  fixed  type  of 
the  Italianate  pieces;  he  is  enriched  by  characteristics 
which  relate  him  to  his  own  class  in  Paris.  The  'Ecole 
des  Maris '  is  only  a  comedy  of  intrigue,  yet  it  is  almost  a 
comedy  of  character.  In  fact,  it  might  even  be  termed 
a  problem-play,  for  in  spite  of  its  gaiety,  its  cheerfulness, 
its  optimism,  its  healthy  fun-making,  it  conveys  its  lesson, 
and  the  laughter  it  arouses  leads  to  thought.  Two  theories 
of  education  are  set  over  against  each  other;  and  their 
logical  consequences  are  shown.  Ariste  and  Sganarelle 
are  the  guardians  of  two  sisters,  and  each  of  them  wishes 
to  marry  his  young  ward.  Ariste  tries  to  win  the  love  of 
Leonor  by  liberality  of  treatment;  and  he  is  rewarded  by 
her  affectionate  regard.  Sganarelle  is  narrow  and  hard 
and  masterful;  he  is  already  a  domestic  tyrant;  and 
Isabelle  resents  his  domineering  selfishness.  With  ingen- 
uous ingenuity  she  encourages  a  younger  lover;  and  it 
must  be  confessed  that,  absurd  and  odious  as  Sganarelle 
may  be,  Isabelle  is  not  an  entirely  agreeable  figure;  she 
is  too  forward,  too  sly,  too  ready  to  fall  into  the  arms  of  a 
lover  whom  she  really  does  not  know.  A  little  more, 
and  we  might  be  tempted  to  dismiss  her  as  no  better  than 
a  flirtatious  minx.  As  it  is,  she  disguises  herself  as  her 
sister  and  tricks  her  guardian  into  consenting  to  her 
wedding  with  Valere,  making  Sganarelle  believe  that  he 
is  aiding  the  elopement  of  Leonor.  Voltaire  was  only 
just  in  praising  the  way  in  which  Moliere  winds  up  this 
play,  as  "probable,  natural,  developed  out  of  the  plot, 
and  what  is  even  better,  extremely  comic." 

The  'Ecole  des  Maris'  has  not  only  the  fixed  types  of 
the  comedy-of-masks,  but  also  the  customary  public 
square  for  the  single  scene  needed  by  its  three  acts,  with 
the  house  of  Sganarelle  on  one  side  and  that  of  Valere 


96  MOLIERE 

on  the  other.  It  is  here  outdoors  that  Ariste  and  Sgan- 
arelle  discuss  their  theories  of  education,  and  that  Sgan- 
arelle  and  Isabelle  talk  over  their  private  affairs.  This 
open  square  that  Moliere  took  from  the  Italians  (as  they 
had  taken  it  from  Latin  comedy,  which  had  inherited  it 
from  the  Greek)  was  a  most  convenient  convention  for 
the  comic  playwright.  Moliere  was  in  time  to  learn 
how  to  forego  its  aid;  but  without  it  the  plot  of  the  '  Ecole 
des  Maris'  would  have  needed  to  be  handled  in  very 
different  fashion.  In  this  comedy  we  see  him  using  the 
framework  and  the  fixed  types  of  the  Italians  for  a  sincere 
portrayal  of  the  manners  and  the  people  of  his  own  time. 
He  made  a  more  or  less  farcical  complication  carry 
social  criticism,  vivid  and  veracious;  and  by  so  doing  he 
took  a  long  step  in  advance,  allowing  us  already  to  foresee 
the  day  when  he  could  afford  to  do  without  the  devices  of 
the  Italians,  from  whom  he  had  learnt  how  to  give  his 
earlier  pieces  the  bustling  animation  the  ordinary  play- 
goer always  delights  in. 


It  was  not  for  the  ordinary  playgoer  that  Moliere  pre- 
pared his  next  play,  but  for  the  king.  Early  in  1661 
Mazarin  had  died;  and  Louis  XIV  was  at  last  free  to 
rule  France  according  to  his  pleasure.  Firmly  resolved 
never  to  submit  himself  again  to  the  control  of  any  single 
minister,  he  had  taken  the  reins  of  government  into  his 
own  hands.  The  foremost  of  the  cardinal's  assistants 
in  administration  was  Fouquet,  superintendent  of  the 
finances,  \vhose  pockets  were  full  to  overflowing  even 
when  the  coffers  of  the  state  were  empty.  Colbert  had  no 
difficulty  in  arousing  the  king's  suspicion  as  to  the  source 
of  Fouquet's  wealth;  and  the  superintendent  began  to 


FROM  'SGANARELLE'  TO  THE  TACHEUX'  97 

feel  that  his  position  was  insecure.  In  the  misguided 
hope  of  retaining  the  royal  favor,  the  ill-advised  official 
invited  the  monarch  to  visit  his  palatial  residence  at  Vaux, 
where  he  provided  an  entertainment  of  the  utmost  luxury 
and  prodigality.  This  ostentatious  magnificence  so  out- 
raged the  young  sovereign  that  he  was  tempted  to  order 
Fouquet's  arrest  in  the  midst  of  the  feast.  Summary 
punishment  was  delayed  only  a  few  days;  and  the  man 
who  had  misadministered  the  finances  of  France  spent 
the  remaining  years  of  his  life  in  confinement. 

The  young  king  was  already  known  to  delight  in  every 
form  of  theatrical  entertainment;  and  Fouquet  did  not 
fail  to  supply  actors  and  dancers  who  were  to  appear 
together  in  a  comedy-ballet,  a  hybrid  form  not  unlike  the 
English  masque,  but  perhaps  a  little  less  elaborate.  Mo-  \ 
Here  was  called  upon  to  devise  a  plot  which  would  permit 
the  frequent  appearance  of  a  group  of  dancers;  and  he 
had  only  a  fortnight's  notice  in  which  to  improvise  his 
play.  He  worked  against  time  and  he  was  ready  to  the 
minute;  and  on  August  twenty-seventh  the  'Facheux' 
was  acted  in  the  gardens  of  Vaux.  Never  did  Moliere 
display  his  sheer  cleverness  more  adroitly  or  more  abun- 
dantly than  in  this  three  act  comedy  in  verse,  written  to 
order  and  written  in  haste.  He  made  a  virtue  of  necessity 
and  chose  the*simplest  of  themes,  which  lent  itself  to  the 
presentation  of  a  series  of  contrasting  characters.  An 
ardent  young  lover,  played  by  La  Grange,  is  shown  trying 
to  get  speech  with  his  mistress;  and  his  attempts  to  ap- 
proach her  are  thwarted  and  his  interviews  with  her  are 
interrupted  by  a  succession  of  bores,  who  thrust  them- 
selves upon  him,  each  of  them  insisting  upon  the  lover's 
attention  while  he  talks  about  his  own  affairs  with  a 
prolixity  which  is  as  exasperating  to  the  hero  as  it  is  amus- 


98  MOLIERE 

ing  to  the  spectators.  Three  of  these  obtruding  characters 
were  undertaken  by  Moliere  himself,  one  in  each  act, 
allowing  him  to  display  his  histrionic  versatility. 

Even  in  the  intermission  between  the  acts  the  unfor- 
tunate lover  was  not  left  in  peace,  since  it  was  then  the 
turn  of  the  dancers  who  came  on  as  gardeners,  as  cobblers, 
as  players  of  bowls,  and  who  kept  on  getting  in  his  way, 
forcing  him  to  join  in  their  sports,  and  preventing  him 
from  overtaking  his  lady-love.  Dancing  did  not  then 
demand  the  terpsichorean  agility  expected  in  the  theater 
to-day.  There  was  no  sharp  difference  between  the  dan- 
cing of  the  drawing-room  and  the  dancing  of  the  stage. 
Dancing  then  consisted  of  a  series  of  rhythmic  and  stately 
movements  to  music,  steps  and  gestures  in  unison,  by 
groups  suitably  attired.  It  was  closely  akin  to  the  court- 
quadrille  and  the  minuet;  and  it  was  possible  to  amateurs. 
In  fact  the  class  of  professional  dancers  could  then  scarcely 
be  said  to  exist;  and  those  who  took  part  in  the  ballet  at 
Vaux  were  probably  the  dancing-masters  of  Paris. 

Moliere  was  always  willing  enough  to  borrow  a  plot 
(r  a  form  suitable  for  his  immediate  purpose;  but  he 
!'was  also  fertile  in  finding  new  forms  and  in  composing 
new  plots.  In  the  'Facheux'  he  produced  a  play  of  a 
species  never  before  seen  on  the  stage.  This  unpretend- 
ing piece,  little  more  than  a  succession  of  episodic  scenes, 
has  a  backbone  of  its  own;  it  has  the  contrast  and  conflict 
of  character  which  comedy  calls  for.  Its  separate  in- 
cidents may  have  each  of  them  a  likeness  to  the  self- 
revelatory  monologue  long  popular  in  the  Middle  Ages; 
but  there  was  unexpected  novelty  and  unusual  daring  in 
presenting  to  the  assembled  courtiers  a  series  of  sharply 
etched  portraits  of  their  own  class,  bores  of  high  degree, 
caught  in  the  act  and  held  up  to  laughter.  Here  was 


FROM  'SGANARELLE'  TO  THE  'FACHEUX'  99 

social  satire  brought  home  to  the  court  itself,  light  yet 
firm,  delicate  yet  vigorous.  The  production  of  the  'Fa- 
cheux'  marks  another  stride  toward  the  high  comedy  that 
Moliere  was  to  attain  in  due  season. 

The  little  play  pleased  the  king,  who  took  occasion 
to  present  the  author  to  a  courtier  renowned  for  long 
tales  of  his  own  prowess  in  the  hunting-field;  and  the 
monarch  slyly  suggested  that  here  was  an  original  the 
satirist  had  overlooked.  The  playwright  was  prompt  to 
take  the  royal  hint;  and  when  the  'Facheux'  was  again 
adted  before  Louis  XIV  at  Fontainebleau  a  few  days  later, 
the  gallery  of  bores  had  gained  another  portrait,  for  which 
Moliere  thanked  the  king  in  the  neatly  turned  preface  he 
put  to  the  play  when  he  published  it.  Here  is  yet  another 
similarity  of  Moliere's  career  to  Shakspere's,  in  that  they 
both  had  royal  collaborators — if  it  is  true  that  the  exciting 
cause  of  the  'Merry  Wives'  was  the  desire  of  Elizabeth 
to  see  "the  fat  knight  in  love." 

The  'Facheux'  was  the  first  play  that  Moliere  had 
written  specially  for  the  king;  and  in  the  following  No- 
vember he  brought  it  out  at  the  Palais-Royal,  ballets  and 
all,  so  that  the  ordinary  playgoers  might  profit  by  what 
had  been  prepared  for  the  court.  Slight  as  it  was  in  its 
texture,  it  hit  the  taste  of  the  town.  Perhaps  at  first  there 
was  chiefly  an  interest  of  curiosity  to  gaze  at  an  entertain- 
ment devised  for  royalty.  Perhaps  there  was  also  a 
satisfaction  in  seeing  the  courtiers  themselves  exposed  to 
ridicule.  Yet  the  little  play  proved  to  have  merits  of  its 
own,  and  it  held  the  stage  for  sixty  or  seventy  years.  It 
was  profitable  to  the  company;  and  it  was  profitable  to 
Moliere  himself  in  that  it  brought  him  into  closer  relation 
with  Louis  XIV,  whose  support  was  to  be  necessary  for 
his  full  expansion  as  a  dramatist. 


CHAPTER  VI 
HIS  FRIENDSHIPS  AND  HIS  MARRIAGE 


MOLIERE  had  now  attained  the  age  of  forty;  and  his 
outlook  on  the  future  was  brighter  than  ever  before. 
After  long  years  of  wandering  and  experiment  he  had 
come  into  his  own.  He  had  not  yet  revealed  the  full 
possibilities  of  his  gift  as  a  dramatist;  and  probably  very 
few  of  his  contemporaries  in  Paris  so  much  as  suspected 
that  he  was  a  genius — just  as  very  few  of  Shakspere's  asso- 
ciates in  London  had  any  intimation  that  he  was  to  be 
revered  later  as  the  chief  glory  of  Elizabethan  literature. 
Very  likely  Moliere  had  himself  no  inkling  as  yet  of  the 
heights  to  which  he  was  soon  to  climb.  In  all  prob- 
ability he  was  for  the  moment  well  enough  satisfied  with 
what  he  had  already  accomplished. 

He  was  recognized  as  the  foremost  comic  actor  of  his 
time;  his  enemies  even  liked  to  suggest  that  his  plays  were 
in  themselves  poor  things  made  acceptable  only  by  his  own 
surpassing  skill  as  a  comedian.  He  was  the  manager  of  a 
prosperous  theatrical  enterprise;  and  the  men  and  women 
of  the  company  were  loyal  and  grateful.  He  had  brought 
out  in  Paris,  within  three  years,  a  series  of  six  successful 
plays,  interrupted  only  by  one  swift  failure,  speedily  for- 
gotten. He  was  already  gathering  about  him  a  circle  of 


100 


HIS  FRIENDSHIPS  AND  HIS  MARRIAGE   101 

friends,  worthy  companions  of  his  leisure  hours.  And  he 
was  at  last  looking  forward  to  a  marriage  with  one  whom 
he  had  long  cherished.  In  1661,  at  Easter,  when  the 
company  held  its  annual  meeting  to  plan  for  the  next  sea- 
son and  to  engage  new  actors,  he  had  asked  his  associates 
to  allot  him  a  double  share  of  the  receipts,  this  second 
share  being  "for  himself  or  for  his  wife,  if  he  should  marry." 

He  seems  to  have  been  on  excellent  terms  with  his 
father.  His  younger  brother,  also  named  Jean,  had  died 
in  April,  1660;  and  in  time  the  reversion  of  the  royal 
appointment  as  valet  de  chambre  tapissier,  which  Moliere 
had  ceded  back  to  his  father,  when  he  first  went  on  the 
stage,  was  again  confirmed  to  him.  A  few  years  later 
we  shall  find  him  lending  money  to  his  father,  whose 
business  was  apparently  less  prosperous,  although  he  had 
as  customers  many  of  the  best  people  in  Paris;  and  it  y 
was  characteristic  of  Moliere's  thoughtful  kindliness  that 
this  loan  was  made  through  a  third  person,  so  that  the 
elder  Poquelin  might  not  know  to  whom  he  was  indebted. 
What  his  relations  were  with  his  married  sister  we  have 
now  no  information;  but  she  survived  only  until  1665. 

Among  his  intimate  friends  were  not  a  few  of  the  most 
interesting  figures  of  Louis  XIV's  reign.  Chapelle  he  ^ 
had  met  in  his  youth;  and  the  intimacy  was  promptly 
renewed  on  his  return  to  the  capital.  During  the  wander- 
ings in  the  south  he  had  become  acquainted  with  Mignard, 
who  was  the  foremost  French  painter  of  his  time.  The 
earliest  of  the  new  friends  he  made  in  Paris  was  La  Fon- 
taine, who  was  always  hearty  in  his  regard  for  the  man, 
and  cordial  as  well  as  keen  in  his  appreciation  of  the 
author.  Even  as  early  as  the  performance  of  the  '  Facheux ' 
at  Vaux  for  Fouquet,  La  Fontaine  was  outspoken  in  his 
praise,  declaring  that  Moliere  is  "the  man  for  me,"  com- 


102  MOLIERE 

paring  him  with  Terence  and  preferring  him  to  Plautus. 
This  high  opinion  grew  with  the  years;  and  after  Moliere' s 
death  La  Fontaine  wrote  an  epitaph  asserting  that  Moliere 
was  the  equal  of  Plautus  and  of  Terence  put  together. 
Perhaps  the  author  of  the  incomparable  'Fables'  was  the 
earliest  of  all  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  genius  of  the  au- 
thor of  the  'Misanthrope.' 

It  may  have  been  through  La  Fontaine  that  Moliere 
was  first  brought  into  contact  with  Boileau,  who  became 
one  of  his  best  friends  and  who  had  many  tastes  in  com- 
mon with  him.  There  are  no  more  typical  French  authors 
than  Boileau  the  critic  and  Moliere  the  comic  dramatist. 
They  had  the  same  intense  relish  for  veracity  and  the  same 
disgust  for  the  unreal,  the  inflated  and  the  exaggerated. 
They  had  neither  of  them  any  liking  for  excessive  roman- 
ticism or  for  vulgar  burlesque.  What  Moliere  had  already 
done  in  the  drama  and  what  he  was  to  do,  were  precisely 
what  Boileau  was  best  fitted  to  enjoy.  What  Boileau 
attacked  in  his  satires  was  what  Moliere  naturally  de- 
tested and  what  he  was  likely  himself  to  assail  on  occasion. 
Both  of  them  recognized  the  importance  of  the  social  bond 
and  distrusted  excessive  individuality.  They  both  sought 


to  set  forth  a  general  view  of.  life,  rather  than  a  particu- 
lar view.  They  both  had  a  high  regard  for  reality  and 
sobriety,  for  balance  and  order  and  proportion. 

Nisard  insisted  that  the  dominant  quality  of  French 
literature  is  its  imposing  on  the  individual  writer  the  duty 
of  acting  as  the  organ  of  the  general  thought.  Every 
literature,  like  every  language,  reveals  the  characteristics 
of  the  race,  of  which  it  is  the  richest  expression;  but  no 
literature  and  no  language  does  this  more  completely 
than  French.  The  literature  of  France  is  not  lyrical;  it 
is  not  ethereal;  it  is  rarely  emotional,  except  in  its  moral 


HIS  FRIENDSHIPS  AND  HIS  MARRIAGE   103 

or  esthetic  fervor;  it  is  preeminently  practical,  with  little 
tendency  toward  romanticist  exuberance.  Of  this  national 
type,  Boileau  is  the  exponent  in  criticism  and  Moliere  in 
creation;  they  are  the  foremost  representatives  of  these 
essential  French  characteristics.  There  is  no  reason  for 
wonder  that  as  soon  as  they  met  they  understood  and 
appreciated  each  other.  They  had  the  same  foes  and 
they  fought  side  by  side  against  pretenders  of  all  sorts. 

For  a  season  or  two  the  young  Racine  made  a  fourth 
with  Moliere  and  Boileau  and  La  Fontaine;  and  the 
fabulist  has  left  a  record  of  their  cheerful  gatherings,  a 
mutual  admiration  society,  richer  in  genius  than  that 
earlier  circle  to  which  Vergil  and  Horace  belonged.  The 
four  poets  talked  chiefly  about  the  technicalities  of  their 
art,  as  artists  are  wont  to  do  whenever  they  meet  together 
with  no  alien  spirits  to  misunderstand  them.  Different 
as  they  were  in  character  and  in  conduct,  they  were  united 
in  holding  the  same  artistic  ideals.  They  were  all  lovers 
of  veracity,  of  fidelity  to  nature  as  they  severally  saw  it, 
of  integrity  in  craftsmanship.  They  all  accepted  the 
code  that  Boileau  was  soon  to  declare  in  his  'Art  of  Poetry/ 
which  may  be  regarded  as  the  outcome  and  the  summing 
up  of  their  fraternal  discussions.  The  ambitious  young 
Racine  could  not  fail  to  profit  by  the  privilege  of  analyz- 
ing the  technic  of  playmaking,  the  same  in  tragedy  as  in 
comedy,  with  Moliere,  who  was  master  of  all  its  secrets. 

It  was  Moliere  the  manager  who  a  little  later  ac- 
cepted and  produced  the  first  play  that  Racine  wrote,  and 
who  also  brought  out  the  second  tragedy  'Alexandre/  the 
earliest  in  which  the  young  poet  really  revealed  his  great 
gifts.  And  Moliere  was  repaid  with  ingratitude,  since 
Racine,  disappointed  at  the  acting  of  the  Palais-Royal 
company,  better  fitted  for  representing  comic  themes  than 


io4  MOLIERE 

tragic,  surreptitiously  took  his  play  to  the  company  at 
the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne,  where  it  was  performed  more 
to  his  satisfaction.  According  to  the  usage  of  the  time, 
this  was  not  illegal;  but  it  was  a  breach  of  custom  as  it 
was  a  breach  of  faith.  It  interrupted  the  friendship  of 
the  two  dramatists,  although  Boileau  managed  to  keep 
on  good  terms  with  both  of  them.  Not  long  after,  Racine 
again  added  to  his  ingratitude  by  persuading  Mademoiselle 
Du  Pare  and  her  husband  "Gros-Rene"  to  desert  from 
Moliere' s  company  and  to  join  that  at  the  Hotel  de  Bour- 
gogne, to  which  he  continued  to  give  his  plays.  It  is 
impossible  not  to  find  a  narrow  selfishness  in  these  ma- 
neuvers of  Racine,  in  marked  contrast  with  the  kindly 
generosity  and  the  punctilious  delicacy  which  always 
characterized  Moliere' s  conduct. 


II 

It  was  not  only  with  his  fellow  poets  that  Moliere  made 
friends,  now  that  he  was  settled  in  the  capital;  he  won 
the  esteem  also  of  certain  of  the  foremost  men  of  France. 
During  his  strolling  in  the  south  he  had  been  on  terms 
of  intimacy  with  the  Prince  of  Conti,  who  delighted  in 
having  him  at  his  table  and  in  discussing  with  him  the 
affairs  of  the  day.  In  Paris,  Moliere  came  in  time  to  be 
honored  with  the  regard  of  Conti's  elder  brother,  the 
great  Conde,  who  found  it  easy  to  bridge  the  gap  that 
separated  a  comic  actor  from  a  prince  of  the  blood.  Conde 
appreciated  the  simple  dignity  of  Moliere's  character, 
as  he  enjoyed  the  full  humor  of  Moliere's  plays.  He 
was  glad  to  have  Moliere  with  him  and  to  engage  in 
familiar  conversation  with  a  man  who  might  think  in- 
dependently, but  who  never  forgot  the  respect  due  to  rank. 


HIS  FRIENDSHIPS  AND  HIS  MARRIAGE  105 


Grimarest  went  so  far  as  to  assert  that  Conde 
Moliere  to  drop  in  whenever  he  had  a  spare  hour:  "just 
send  up  your  name  by  a  servant,  and  I  will  leave  every- 
thing to  be  with  you." 

With  his  social  superiors,  as  with  his  social  equals, 
Moliere  was  always  simple  and  sincere,  never  self-asser- 
tive and  never  obsequious.  He  bore  himself  in  manly 
fashion  whether  he  was  addressing  Conde  and  the  king 
himself,  or  whether  he  was  talking  shop  with  Boileau 
and  La  Fontaine.  He  was  a  stanch  friend  and  a  charming 
companion,  loyal  and  broad-minded  as  a  man,  just  as  he 
was  as  an  author.  When  he  chose  he  could  be  a  delight- 
ful talker;  but  more  often  he  kept  silent,  listening  intently, 
watching  the  several  speakers,  and  storing  up  observa- 
tions of  human  nature.  It  was  Boileau  who,  noticing 
this  tendency  to  taciturnity,  called  Moliere  "the  con- 
templator."  Shakspere  also  was  good  company  and 
was  highly  esteemed  by  his  many  friends,  who  failed  to 
suspect  his  overwhelming  superiority.  And  Sainte-Beuve 
has  dwelt  on  the  curious  fact  that  Shakspere,  the  tragic 
dramatist,  seems  to  have  been  of  a  jovial  temperament, 
taking  life  easily  and  lightly,  so  far  as  we  know;  whereas 
Moliere,  the  comic  dramatist,  was  rather  melancholy  in 
his  disposition,  given  to  silent  brooding,  although  always 
finding  pleasure  in  the  society  of  his  friends. 

Moliere  was  fond  of  good  cheer  as  well  as  of  good 
company.  Several  of  those  who  were  entertained  by  him 
in  the  later  and  more  prosperous  years  of  his  wandering 
in  the  provinces,  have  recorded  their  appreciation  of  his 
hospitality  and  have  testified  to  the  abundance  of  his 
table.  After  his  return  to  Paris  and  after  the  success 
of  the  company  had  given  him  ample  means  to  gratify 
his  wishes,  he  was  glad  to  gather  his  friends  about  him 


io6  MOLIERE 

and  to  treat  them  sumptuously.  He  lived  largely  and 
liberally.  The  inventory  of  his  household  goods  dis- 
closed a  home  of  more  than  comfortable  ease,  almost  of 
luxury,  with  abundant  plate  and  linen  and  with  a  few 
pictures.  Yet  he  was  always  abstemious  himself;  and  no 
floating  anecdote  charges  him  with  any  undue  indulgence 
in  meat  and  drink,  like  that  carouse  with  Ben  Jonson 
which  is  said  to  have  carried  off  Shakspere.  Long  before 
his  early  death  his  health  was  so  enfeebled  that  he  had 
to  put  himself  on  a  milk  diet.  But  even  then  he  freely 
spread  before  his  friends  the  creature  comforts  he  had 
to  deny  to  himself. 

Conde  was  not  the  only  one  of  the  chief  figures  of  the 
court  with  whom  Moliere  had  the  friendliest  relations. 
Another  was  the  Marshal  de  Vivonne,  who  was  also  an 
intimate  of  Boileau.  Later  the  austere  Marquis  de 
Montausier  was  pleased  to  make  advances  to  him.  Some 
of  these  noble  friends  invited  him  to  their  own  tables; 
others  accepted  his  hospitality  at  one  or  another  of  the 
taverns  where  it  was  then,  as  it  is  now,  fashionable  to 
entertain  more  liberally  than  one's  own  home  might 
permit.  Moliere  was  no  parasite,  content  to  accept 
without  giving.  He  was  prompt  in  returning  the  courte- 
sies he  had  received;  and  many  of  the  most  interesting 
men  of  France  were  glad  to  be  his  guests. 

And  yet  a  man  of  forty,  however  rich  in  friends  and 
however  absorbed  in  incessant  labor  in  two  different  arts, 
may  be  lonely  at  his  own  fireside  and  may  long  for  the 
companionship  of  a  wife.  That  Moliere  felt  this  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  he  married  not  long  after  he  had  pro- 
duced the  'Ecole  des  Maris'  and  not  long  before  he 
brought  out  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes/ 


MO  LI  ERE 

From  a  photograph  by  Hraun  Clement  &  Co.  of  the  painting  by  Mignard,  in  the  Musee 
de  Chantilly 


HIS  FRIENDSHIPS  AND  HIS  MARRIAGE   107 

III 

In  the  marriage-contract  the  bride  is  called  Armande 
Bejart,  daughter  of  Marie  Herve,  widow  of  Joseph  Bejart. 
She  was  therefore  the  sister  of  Moliere's  old  companion, 
Madeleine  Bejart,  and  of  the  three  other  Bejarts  who 
were,  or  who  had  been,  members  of  the  company.  At- 
tempts have  been  made  to  maintain  that  she  was  not 
really  the  daughter  of  Marie  Bejart,  but  her  granddaughter, 
the  second  child  of  Madeleine.  The  evidence  adduced 
in  support  of  this  contention  is  very  flimsy;  it  is  wholly 
circumstantial;  and  it  has  as  its  foundation  only  casual 
gossip.  There  is  no  real  reason  for  disbelieving  the 
various  legal  documents  which  declare  her  parentage. 
She  was  a  woman  of  unusual  charm  if  not  of  unusual 
beauty;  and  she  became  a  very  popular  actress.  From 
one  cause  or  another  she  aroused  bitter  enmity;  and  a 
quarter  of  a  century  after  her  marriage  and  long  after  the 
death  of  Moliere  and  her  own  remarriage,  she  was  the 
victim  of  an  atrocious  libel,  purporting  to  set  forth  her 
intrigues — a  libel  of  a  type  not  uncommon  in  the  later 
history  of  the  theater.  The  anonymous  book  in  which 
she  is  insulted  is  absolutely  untrustworthy;  many  of  its 
specific  assertions  have  been  shown  to  be  contrary  to  fact; 
and  it  may  be  dismissed  as  inspired  by  malignant  envy.  It 
deserves  no  credence;  and  yet  it  has  stained  her  fame  and 
even  cast  a  shadow  on  the  glory  of  Moliere.  And  when  all 
is  said,  she  remains  an  enigmatic  figure,  not  easy  to  portray. 

At  the  time  of  her  marriage  she  was  scant  twenty  years 
of  age,  having  been  born  after  Moliere  went  on  the  stage 
and  before  he  began  his  strolling  with  Madeleine  Bejart 
and  her  brothers.  Apparently  she  was  the  favorite  sister 
of  Madeleine,  who  was  later  to  leave  her  the  most  of  her 


io8  MOLIERE 

fortune.  The  elder  sister  may  have  undertaken  to  bring 
up  the  younger;  but  we  do  not  know  whether  Armande's 
childhood  was  spent  with  her  mother  in  Paris  or  with  her 
brothers  and  sisters  when  they  were  wandering  through 
the  south.  We  have  no  information  as  to  her  education. 
She  had  a  pleasing  voice,  singing  charmingly  both  in 
French  and  in  Italian,  so  that  she  could  probably  speak 
at  least  one  other  language.  It  is  possible  that  Moliere 
had  seen  her  grow  to  girlhood  and  that  he  had  himself 
attended  to  her  instruction.  He  was  on  the  most  intimate 
terms  with  the  whole  family,  making  his  home  in  Paris 
with  her  mother  and  her  sisters.  After  they  had  settled 
again  in  the  capital  she  had  flowered  into  womanhood 
under  his  eyes  and  perhaps  under  his  care. 

She  was  not  strictly  beautiful,  for  her  eyes  were  too 
small  and  her  mouth  was  too  large.  But  she  was  un- 
deniably fascinating;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
Moliere  was  passionately  in  love  with  her.  That  she 
returned  his  ardent  affection  is  unlikely.  He  was  twice 
her  age;  and  a  man  of  forty  was  held  to  be  far  older  then 
than  he  is  now,  as  we  can  discover  by  a  study  of  Moliere' s 
own  comedies.  He  was  not  good-looking — at  lea^t  he 
could  not  be  accepted  as  distinguished  for  manly  beauty. 
He  was  melancholy  always,  often  moody,  and  even  on  occa- 
sion abrupt.  He  was  very  busy,  being  the  manager  of  the 
theater  and  the  stage-manager  of  the  company,  incessantly 
painstaking  in  his  efforts  to  have  his  plays  performed 
as  he  had  conceived  them.  He  was  absorbed  in  his  work 
as  a  dramatist,  having  to  please  both  the  king  and  the 
playgoers  of  Paris.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
this  girl  of  twenty  was  competent  to  appreciate  him.  In 
other  words,  she  was  the  ordinary  wife  of  an  extraordinary 
man,  the  commonplace  companion  of  a  genius. 


HIS  FRIENDSHIPS  AND  HIS  MARRIAGE   109 

Even  if  she  felt  no  romantic  attraction  toward  him, 
she  may  well  have  liked  him,  respected  him  and  admired 
him.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  marriage 
was  other  than  welcome  to  her.  Many  a  girl  of  twenty 
has  been  willing  enough  to  marry  a  man  of  forty.  And  to 
wed  Moliere  was  for  her  a  brilliant  match.  He  was  the 
most  popular  of  actors;  he  was  the  most  successful  of 
comic  dramatists;  he  was  the  skilful  manager  of  a  theater 
which  he  had  established  in  the  favor  of  the  people.  He 
was  the  friend  of  men  of  letters  and  of  courtiers;  he  was 
encouraged  by  the  king  and  in  close  relation  to  the  court. 
He  was  making  money,  and  he  was  living  almost  luxuri- 
ously. He  could  provide  her  with  the  appropriate  back- 
ground that  a  pretty  girl  longs  for.  Above  all,  he  could 
give  her  a  prominent  position  in  the  theater,  for  the 
wife  of  the  manager  who  is  also  the  chief  author  is  not 
likely  to  be  put  off  with  bad  parts.  Whatever  histrionic 
ability  she  might  be  endowed  with  was  certain  to  be  en- 
couraged and  displayed  by  an  incomparable  trainer. 

Coquettish  certainly  and  possibly  a  little  flirtatious 
also,  the  stage  would  bring  her  the  abundant  admira- 
tion she  delighted  in.  Young  and  gay,  light-hearted  and 
perhaps  even  light-headed,  the  stage-door  was  to  be  the 
portal  of  the  realm  wherein  she  might  parade  that  original 
and  excellent  taste  in  dress  which  was  to  make  her  an 
innovator  in  fashions,  often  followed  by  the  great  ladies 
of  the  court.  Since  her  sisters  and  her  brothers  had  won 
success  on  the  stage,  she  might  well  look  forward  to 
theatrical  triumphs  of  her  own.  And  this  hope  was 
abundantly  justified.  Although  she  had  apparently  never 
before  appeared  as  an  actress,  she  developed  rapidly  under 
her  husband's  guidance.  Her  native  endowment  must 
have  been  ample;  and  she  was  intelligent  enough  and 


no  MOLIERE 

docile  enough  to  profit  by  Moliere's  instruction.  For  her 
he  composed  a  series  of  characters,  which  called  for  un- 
deniable versatility  and  which  were  fashioned  to  reveal 
the  capabilities  perceived  by  the  keen  and  loving  eyes  of 
her  husband.  She  became  an  incomparably  brilliant  ac- 
tress of  the  most  difficult  characters  in  high  comedy. 
She  revealed  herself  capable  of  rising  to  any  height  of 
histrionic  achievement  which  Moliere  pointed  out  to  her. 

She  was  equally  effective  in  the  keen-witted  and  hard- 
hearted coquettes  and  in  the  women  of  a  gentler  type, 
endowed  with  tenderness  and  delicacy.  Not  a  few  of 
Moliere's  biographers  have  seen  fit  to  identify  her  with 
one  or  more  of  the  characters  that  her  husband  devised 
for  her  acting,  finding  warrant  for  this  in  La  Grange's 
assertion  that  Moliere  often  put  himself  into  his  plays 
and  those  closest  to  him.  No  doubt,  it  is  possible  now 
and  again  to  suspect  that  this  passage  or  that  in  one  play 
or  another  may  have  derived  its  piquancy  or  its  poignancy 
from  the  poet's  own  experience  or  even  from  his  own 
sufferings.  But  this  is  always  a  most  dangerous  pastime, 
likely  to  lead  us  astray,  since  the  playwright  is  never  a 
lyric  poet  dissecting  his  own  soul;  he  is  and  he  must  be 
always  a  dramatist,  making  his  characters  speak  out  of 
the  fulness  of  their  own  hearts. 

Moreover  certain  of  these  critics  have  chosen  to 
identify  Moliere's  wife  only  with  the  repellent  characters 
he  caused  her  to  impersonate,  and  have  refused  to  see  her 
in  the  more  attractive  figures  which  make  up  the  majority 
of  her  parts  in  his  plays.  It  is  true  that  she  appeared 
as  the  unworthy  heroine  of  the  'Misanthrope'  and  as  the 
worthless  wife  in  'Georges  Dandin';  but  it  is  also  true 
that  he  confided  to  her  sympathetic  and  estimable  charac- 
ters to  portray  in  'Tartuffe'  and  the  'Femmes  Savantes,' 


HIS  FRIENDSHIPS  AND  HIS  MARRIAGE   in 

in  the  '  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme '  and  in  the  'Malade 
Imaginaire.'  There  is  no  justice  in  seeking  to  discover 
the  real  woman  behind  the  character  entrusted  to  the 
actress  in  the  one  set  of  comedies  any  more  than  in  the 
other.  It  is  safer  to  believe  that  Moliere,  in  writing 
parts  for  his  wife,  sought  to  provide  her  with  characters 
which  would  enable  her  to  display  her  varied  charm,  her 
contrasting  qualities,  her  versatility.  Like  every  other 
dramatist,  he  made  his  profit  out  of  the  manifold  capacities 
of  the  actors  and  actresses  for  whom  he  was  composing  his 
plays;  he  gave  them  the  parts  he  believed  they  could  act 
most  effectively,  wasting  no  thought  on  the  actual  per- 
sonality of  any  one  of  them,  but  keeping  in  mind  only 
his  or  her  histrionic  equipment. 

The  marriage  of  a  man  of  Moliere's  years  and  of  Mo- 
liere's  temperament  with  a  girl  like  Armande  Bejart  con- 
tained small  chance  of  happiness  for  either  of  them.  Yet 
there  is  little  reason  to  suppose  that  it  was  more  unhappy 
than  might  have  been  predicted.  It  was  probably  not 
any  more  unfortunate  in  its  consequences  than  the  mar- 
riages of  Shakspere,  of  Milton  and  of  Goethe.  There  is 
no  valid  evidence  in  support  of  the  graver  accusations 
brought  against  his  wife.  She  was  probably  avid  of 
admiration,  and  he  was  certainly  of  a  jealous  disposition; 
and  this  unworthy  passion  appears  as  the  mainspring  of 
the  action  in  play  after  play  of  his.  Naturally  enough, 
his  enemies,  perceiving  this  weak  point  in  his  character, 
tried  to  hurt  him  by  assailing  his  wife.  Very  likely  he  was 
acutely  conscious  of  the  differences  in  their  ages.  The 
time  came  when  their  incompatibility  was  manifest  to 
both  of  them;  and  for  a  season  they  separated,  only  to 
come  together  again  a  little  while  before  his  fatal  seizure. 
She  bore  him  three  children,  of  whom  only  a  daughter 


ii2  MOLIERE 

survived  him.  At  the  time  of  his  death  she  behaved  with 
courage  and  with  dignity.  A  few  years  later  she  married 
again;  and  she  seems  to  have  been  a  good  wife  to  this 
second  husband.  She  came  out  triumphant  from  a 
scandal  which  involved  her  reputation  and  which  was  a 
curious  anticipation  of  the  affair  of  the  diamond  necklace 
that  came  near  compromising  Marie  Antoinette.  She 
had  one  son  by  her  second  marriage;  and  he  testified  that 
she  brought  him  up  to  revere  the  name  of  Moliere. 

The  marriage-contract  was  signed  on  January  twenty- 
third,  1662,  with  Moliere' s  father  as  one  of  the  witnesses; 
and  the  wedding  took  place  on  February  twentieth. 
Moliere  with  his  customary  liberality  shared  his  goods 
with  his  bride  and  allotted  to  her  a  dowry  of  four  thousand 
livres.  The  young  wife  took  her  place  at  once  in  the 
company  which  her  husband  was  managing.  She  was 
called  Mademoiselle  Moliere — "Madame"  being  then 
reserved  for  persons  of  quality.  She  was  a  novice,  with 
no  theatrical  experience;  at  least,  there  is  no  record  of  her 
ever  having  appeared  on  the  stage.  And  there  was  no 
part  for  her  in  the  new  play  which  her  husband  was  soon 
to  produce,  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes,'  although  it  is  not 
difficult  to  detect  in  that  comedy  the  result  of  Moliere' s 
preoccupations  at  the  moment  of  its  composition. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS 

I 

IT  was  in  the  final  week  of  1662  that  Moliere  brought 
out  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes,'  a  comedy  in  five  acts  in 
verse.  Although  he  was  later  to  produce  as  many  as  three 
plays  in  a  single  year,  he  had  allowed  an  interval  of  fifteen 
months  to  elapse  since  his  preceding  pi£ce.  But  these 
were  the  months  of  his  courtship  and  of  his  honeymoon; 
and  he  may  well  have  found  more  satisfaction  in  the 
society  of  Armande  than  in  sitting  solitary  at  his  desk. 
And  when  the  new  play  did  come  into  being  at  last,  it 
brought  with  it  something  of  the  springtime  aroma  of  that 
happy  season.  It  is  full  of  zest  and  verve,  full  of  sympathy 
for  young  love,  and  full  of  gaiety — a  contagious  gaiety 
which  won  for  it  at  once  a  popularity  unequalled  by  any 
of  the  earlier  pieces,  successful  as  they  had  been  each  in 
its  own  way. 

With  our  completer  knowledge  of  Moliere' s  later  work 
we  may  persuade  ourselves,  if  we  please,  that  we  can 
perceive  in  these  earlier  pieces  the  promise  that  he  actually 
fulfilled;  but  we  have  no  right  to  be  surprised  that  his 
contemporaries  could  not  perceive  this  and  that  they  still 
thought  of  him  as  a  writer  of  amusing  farces.  He  had 
displayed  adroitness  and  resourcefulness  as  a  playmaker; 
he  had  revealed  himself  as  a  humorist  with  unfailing 

"3 


ii4  MOLIERE 

facility  in  touching  the  springs  of  mirth;  and  once,  at  least, 
in  the  ''Precieuses  Ridicules/  he  had  shown  his  ability 
to  depict  contemporary  society.  Yet  not  even  the  keenest 
and  friendliest  of  his  contemporaries  could  find  warrant 
in  what  he  had  already  done  for  foreseeing  what  he  was 
soon  to  do.  If  Moliere  had  died  on  the  day  of  his  wedding, 
the  historians  of  literature  would  not  really  be  justified 
in  suspecting  that  he  had  been  cut  off  just  as  his  genius 
as  a  comic  dramatist  was  about  to  expand.  So,  if  Shak- 
spere  had  died  before  'Romeo  and  Juliet/  he  would  have 
left  little  to  give  any  one  the  right  to  predict  the  nobler 
and  deeper  plays  whereon  his  supremacy  is  based. 

In  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  Moliere  took  a  long  stride 
toward  his  future  goal;  and  it  is  in  this  play  that  we  first 
glimpse  qualities  he  was  later  to  reveal  more  abundantly. 
Yet  to  a  contemporary  it  might  very  well  seem  to  be  only  a 
Second  Part  to  the  'Ecole  des  Maris.'  The  later  play 
is  indeed  very  much  the  same  thing  as  the  earlier;  but 
it  is  also  a  good  deal  more,  since  the  'Ecole  des  Maris' 
was  hardly  more  than  a  clever  and  amusing  anecdote  in 
action. 

The  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  gives  us  the  same  pleasure 
by  its  artfully  constructed  story,  with  its  expectancy,  its 
suspense  and  its  surprises.  It  holds  our  interest  by  its 
episodes,  ingenious  and  humorous  and  graceful.  But 
it  also  contains  far  more  clearly  than  its  predecessor  that 
picture  of  life  which  provokes  reflection.  We  laugh  at 
least  as  frequently  over  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  as  over 
the  'Ecole  des  Maris';  and  after  the  laughter  has  died 
down  we  find  ourselves  thinking.  There  is  a  larger  lesson 
in  this  mirthful  laughter  than  Moliere  had  ever  earlier 
cared  to  suggest. 

Even  though  Moliere  put  more  meaning  into  his  work, 


'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS  115 

he  kept  fast  to  the  approved  formula  of  the  comedy-of- 
masks,  profiting  by  its  freedom,  but  dropping  now  what  he 
no  longer  needed.  The  scene  is  again  the  public  square, 
in  two  houses  of  which  two  chief  characters  reside.  All 
the  talk,  however  intimate  it  may  be,  is  exchanged  out 
in  the  open  quite  in  the  Italian  manner.  And  the  several 
characters,  while  they  have  acquired  a  certain  individuality 
of  their  own,  are  still  more  or  less  types.  The  young  lover, 
Horace,  is  only  a  young  lover;  and  Moliere  borrowed  from 
his  own  'Etourdi'  the  effective  device  of  letting  this  in- 
genuous youth  babble  the  secrets  of  his  wooing  to  the  one 
person  from  whom  they  ought  to  be  kept — the  same  device 
we  find  in  the  'Merry  Wives'  when  FalstafF  confides  to 
Ford  the  particulars  of  his  intrigue  with  Mrs.  Ford. 
Arnolphe,  the  part  that  Moliere  wrote  for  his  own  acting, 
is  closely  akin  to  the  Sganarelle  of  the  'Ecole  des  Maris'; 
it  might  even  now  have  borne  the  same  name  if  Moliere 
had  not  been  growing  away  from  the  more  obvious  char- 
acteristics of  Italian  comedy.  The  older  method  survives 
also  in  the  full  dozen  of  Arnolphe's  soliloquies,  so  varied 
and  so  adroitly  placed,  however,  that  we  listen  to  them  all 
with  interest,  amused  by  the  self-revelation. 

It  must  be  confessed  also  that  the  new  play  by  its  struct- 
ure  discloses  itself  as  a  transition  between  the  comedy- 
of-masks  and  the  comedy-of-character.  Its  framework  is 
still  Italian  and  its  content  is  already  French.  The  naked 
plot,  detached  and  considered  by  itself,  is  as  artificial  in 
its  conduct  and  as  arbitrary  in  its  conclusion  as  any  Italian- 
ate  piece,  the  final  discomfiture  of  Arnolphe  being  brought 
about  by  a  "recognition"  in  accord  with  the  tradition  of 
Greek  comedy  and  perhaps  justified  by  the  vicissitudes 
of  Greek  society,  although  not  at  all  warranted  by  the 
facts  of  life  in  the  France  of  Louis  XIV.  Moliere  was 


n6  MOLIERE 

C  slowly  learning  how  to  put  veracity  into  comedy,  which 
had  been  frankly  fantastic;  and  at  first  he  did  not  hug 
reality  too  closely,  finding  his  profit  in  the  conventions 
which  the  playgoing  public^had  been  trained  to  accept. 
His  plot  sets  before  us  the  wooing  of  a  willing  maid  by  a 
young  lover  almost  under  the  eyes  of  a  jealous  elderly 
man  who  was  reserving  her  for  himself — a  plot  often  used 
before  and  since,  notably  by  Scarron  and  by  Beaumar- 
chais.  For  mere  invention  Moliere  cared  as  little  as 
Shakspere,  taking  his  material  wherever  he  might  find  it 
and  borrowing  from  others  as  unhesitatingly  as  he  bor- 
rowed from  himself. 

Arnolphe,  a  man  of  forty,  once  bought  a  little  girl  of 
four,  whom  he  has  brought  up  to  be  his  wife,  keeping  her 
in  the  densest  ignorance  and  holding  that  a  wife  knows 
too  much  when  she  knows  anything.  Agnes  is  the  em- 
bodiment of  innocence,  as  frank  as  she  is  simple.  Her 
ignorance  has  left  her  without  protection;  and  when 
Horace  makes  up  to  her,  during  an  absence  of  Arnolphe, 
she  knows  no  reason  why  she  should  not  accept  these 
gratifying  advances.  Horace,  as  it  happens,  is  the  son  of 
an  old  friend  of  Arnolphe's,  and  as  he  has  just  arrived 
in  town  he  does  not  know  that  Arnolphe  has  taken  another 
name,  "M.  de  la  Souche."  So  he  unhesitatingly  tells 
Arnolphe  all  about  his  meetings  with  the  girl  that  "M. 
de  la  Souche"  is  hoping  to  marry.  And  when  Arnolphe, 
thus  informed,  interrogates  Agnes,  the  innocent  girl  is 
equally  frank.  Neither  of  the  young  people  conceals  any- 
thing from  him;  and  yet  he  is  powerless  to  prevent  their 
lovemaking.  Indeed,  these  successive  confessions  of 
Horace  and  of  Agnes  to  Arnolphe,  who  cannot  help  dis- 
covering the  very  things  he  does  not  want  to  know,  are 
increasingly  amusing.  They  unite  the  humor  of  char-  \ 


'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS  117 

acter  to  the  humor  of  situation;  and  even  if  they  are 
I  brought  about  artificially,  they  are  essentially  natural. 
They  explain  Voltaire's  criticism  that  the  play  seems  to 
be  all  in  action  although  it  is  in  reality  all  in  narrative. 
And  Sainte-Beuve  pointed  out  that  we  are  kept  interested 
through  the  five  acts  of  a  love-story  in  which  the  lovers  do 
not  meet  before  the  eyes  of  the  audience  until  the  middle 
of  the  final  act — than  which  there  could  be  no  better  proof 
of  Moliere' s  dramaturgic  dexterity. 


II 

But  there  is  much  more  in  the  play  than  mere  ingenuity 
of  craftsmanship.  Technical  skill  serves  here  a  larger 
purpose  than  in  the  'Ecole  des  Maris'  or  the  'Etourdi/ 
There  is  a  perfect  clarity  of  exposition;  and  there  is  a 
perfect  unity  of  plot,  since  the  story  is  single,  moving 
forward  steadily,  the  division  into  acts  being  almost  acci- 
dental. Willing  enough  to  borrow  the  externalities  of  his 
play  and  to  let  his  plot-making  be  more  or  less  arbitrary, 
Moliere  insisted  on  presenting  life  as  he  saw  it  and  iH| 
creating  characters  in  accord  with  human  nature.  The) 
scene  is  laid  in  the  Paris  of  his  own  time;  and  the  person- 
ages are  chosen  from  the  burgher  class  he  knew  bestj 
Scarron  and  the  younger  Corneille,  who  were  the  leading 
comic  dramatists  of  France  before  Moliere  came  forward, 
not  only  took  over  Spanish  stories,  but  they  were  content 
also  to  leave  the  scene  in  Spain,  with  no  ambition  to  depict 
the  manners  of  their  own  country;  and  Moliere  himself 
had  laid  the  action  of  the  'Etourdi'  in  Messina.  But  in 
the  'Ecole  des  Femmes,'  even  if  the  intrigue  is  more  or/ 
less  mechanical,  there  is  a  sense  of  reality.  Here  at  last 

is  the  truth  about  life,  even  if  the  story  itself  is  not  a  fact. 

•— > 


I 


ii8  MOLIERE 


The  plot  may  be  manufactured  at  will;    the  people,  at 
least,  are  observed. 

Horace  is  drawn  in  outline  only,  a  silhouette  of  the 
essential  lover,  existing  only  to  adore  and  to  be  adored; 
yet  he  is  a  charming  young  fellow  and  we  rejoice  when  his 
wooing  prospers.  Agnes  has  a  little  of  the  unthinking 
selfishness  of  youth,  eager  to  have  its  own  way  and  unsus- 
.  picious  of  the  cost  to  others.  She  has  the  transparent 
simplicity  of  Miranda,  although  his  more  poetic  theme 
imposed  on  Shakspere  a  more  imaginative  treatment  of 
maidenly  ignorance.  She  is  honest  and  open-hearted, 
with  a  candid  delight  in  being  wooed  and  a  girlish  inability 
\  to  understand  Arnolphe's  suffering.  Arnolphe  himself 
is  also  selfish,  in  fact  grossly  egoistic,  and  finally  foolish. 
He  is  fiercely  jealous,  not  unnaturally;  and  in  his  opin- 
ionated blindness  he  cannot  see  why  he  should  not  be 
preferred  to  the  young  lover  the  girl  scarcely  knows. 
Moliere  was  always  searching  and  acute  in  his  analysis  of 
jealousy,  the  one  passion  from  which  he  himself  suffered. 
Arnolphe  is  grotesquely  absurd  in  his  inability  to  see  him- 
self; but  he  is  intensely  true  and  vibratingly  human.  He 
is  akin  to  us  all;  and  although  we  are  glad  that  he  fails 
to  get  his  heart's  desire,  although  we  laugh  at  him  inces- 
santly, as  the  author  invites  us  to  do,  yet  we  are  sorry  for 
him  also,  and  he  has  a  share  of  our  sympathy,  simply 
because  of  our  human  brotherhood.  He  is  no  puppet 
to  make  empty  laughter  merely,  he  is  one  of  us;  and  even 
while  we  smile,  we  recognize  the  solidarity  of  human 
nature. 

But  even  if  Moliere  managed  to  win  casual  sympathy 
for  the  sufferings  of  Arnolphe,  whom  he  impersonated 
himself,  he  has  left  us  in  no  doubt  that  he  meant  us  rather 
to  be  interested  in  the  wooing  of  the  young  folks;  he  is 


'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS  119 

on    their    side,    plainly   enough.     Arnolphe   was    seeking 
what  he  ought  not  to  have,  since  it  is  everlastingly  or- 
dained that  the  young  should  mate  with  the  young.     We 
are  what  we  are;    and  nature  is  irresistible.     The  course 
of  true  love  may  not  always  run  smooth,  but  the  current 
is  charming.     The  attraction  of  a  man  for  a  maid  and  of  J 
a  maid  for  a  man,  if  it  is  sincere,  even  if  it  is  also  very  j 
sudden,  had  better  be  obeyed,  whatever  older  heads  andj 
colder  hearts  may  object.     That  way,  at  least,  happiness 
may  lie,  who  knows  ?    And  all^pther  ways  lead  to  dis- 
appointment. 

If  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  has  a  sustaining  thesis,  if  it/ 
presents  a  problem  for  consideration,  there  is  no  doubt 
as  to  Moliere' s  own  solution.     There  may  be  a  problem, 
but  there  is  no  enigma.     Probably  Moliere  was  not  con- 
sciously and  deliberately  putting  a  moral  into  his  play, 
even  if  the  moral  is  there  none  the  less  for  those  who  care  ' 
to  see  it.     Possibly,  when  he  held  up  to  scorn  Arnolphe's 
attempt  to  secure  the  fidelity  of  his  future  wife  by  keeping 
her  ignorant,  Moliere  was  not  aware  that  he  was  proffer- 
ing evidence  in  behalf  of  the  belief  that  knowledge  must  • 
precede  morality,  and  that  knowledge  is  in  fact  the  only 
firm  foundation  for  morality.     If  Moliere  was  a  philoso- 
pher, he  was  a  laughing  philosopher,  as  a  comic  dramatist 
must  ever  be;  and  if  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  is  a  problem-/ 
play,  it  is  also  a  comedy  in  which  the  author  never  preaches, 
however  much  he  may  teach.     We  may  dispute  about  the 
meaning  of  the  piece;   but  there  is  no  question  as  to  its 
merriment.     It  is  not  only  charming  and  cheerful,  it  is 
gay  with  felicitous  mirth.     It  is  one  of  Moliere's  most, 
amusing  comic  dramas,  delightful  in  the  library  and  everr 
more  delightful  in  the  theater,  as  a  true  comedy  ought  to 
be.     The  laughter  evoked  by  its  comic  characters  in  comic 


120  MOLIERE 

situations  is  effervescent  and  abundant,  even  if  it  arouses 
serious  thought  when  the  fun  has  faded  a  little  from  the 
memory. 

Ill 

While  the  popularity  of  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'was 
indisputable,  the  new  comedy  aroused  more  abundant 
and  more  acrid  criticism  than  any  of  its  predecessors. 
The  hostility  which  had  shown  itself  when  the  'Pre- 
cieuses  Ridicules'  was  produced,  now  displayed  itself 
with  redoubled,  vigor.  The  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  was 
denounced  as  indecent,  as  immoral,  and  even  as  impious. 
And  for  every  one  of  these  accusations  there  was  just 
sufficient  color  to  make  a  complete  answer  a  little  difficult. 
There  was  one  brief  equivoke,  which  derived  part  of  its 
point  from  the  threat  of  a  latent  indelicacy.  Then  there 
was  the  obvious  support  the  author  gave  to  young  love,  in 
revolt  against  its  lawful  guardian.  Finally,  there  was 
the  scene  wherein  Arnolphe  laid  down  the  sequence  of 
commandments  which  a  wife  ought  to  obey;  and  some 
spectators  chose  to  regard  this  as  a  parody  of  a  sermon. 
But  these  three  alleged  lapses  from  propriety  were  trifles, 
every  one  of  them,  however  malignity  might  seek  to 
magnify  them.  They  were  not  likely  really  to  shock  any 
open-minded  spectator. 

Probably  a  certain  part  of  the  enmity  aroused  against 
Moliere  by  this  play  may  be  attributed  to  a  vague  per- 
ception that  here  was  a  comedy  larger  in  its  scope  and 
deeper  in  its  meaning  than  any  that  had  preceded  it. 
Many  playgoers  then  went  to  the  theater  for  empty 
laughter,  as  do  many  playgoers  now,  having  left  their  minds 
at  home,  and  resenting  every  effort  to  make  them  think. 
The  older  writers  of  comedy  had  been  satisfied  to  deal 


'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS  121 

with  the  externals  of  life;  and  some  spectators  might  hold 
it  to  be  sheer  impudence  in  Moliere  not  to  be  content 
with  what  had  been  good  enough  for  Scarron  and  the  two 
Corneilles.  Perhaps  these  spectators  did  not  object  so 
much  to  the  special  lesson  of  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes' 
as  they  did  to  the  attempt  to  slip  any  lesson  at  all  into  a 
comedy.  They  believed  that  comedy  was  for  laughter 
and  for  laughter  only;  and  that  the  writer  of  comedy^ 
had  no  business  to  smuggle  a  moral  into  his  mirth.  For; 
anything  of  this  sort  there  was  no  precedent;  and  the 
comic  dramatist  who  attempted  it  ought  to  be  suppressed 
at  once  as  a  dangerous  innovator.  We  can  better  under- 
stand this  conservative  attitude  if  we  recall  the  violent 
protests  raised  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  when 
a  few  modern  dramatists  began  to  deal  conscientiously 
with  the  insistent  problems  of  human  conduct.  These 
efforts  to  make  the  drama  more  literary  by  relating  it 
more  closely  to  life  itself,  were  greeted  by  the  strange 
proclamation  that  the  sole  function  of  the  theater  is  to 
facilitate  the  digestion  of  "the  tired  business  man."  There 
must  always  yawn  a  wide  gap  between  those  who  deem 
the  theater  to  be  only  a  place  of  idle  amusement  and  those 
who  rank  the  drama  as  the  loftiest  of  the  arts. 

But  the  opponents  of  Moliere  included  not  only  lazy 
souls  who  did  not  desire  to  be  startled  out  of  their  lethargy, 
and  not  only  prudish  persons  who  affected  to  be  dis- 
gusted by  this  episode  or  by  that  speech,  they  included  also 
some  men  and  more  women  who  had  no  real  liking  for 
the  broad  common  sense,  for  the  hearty  fun,  and  for  the 
streak  of  earthiness  which  is  as  discoverable  in  the  creator 
of  Arnolphe  as  it  is  in  the  creator  of  Falstaff.  Moliere 
and  Shakspere  have  an  animal  side  as  well  as  a  spiritual; 
they  are  healthily  full-bodied  and  full-blooded.  If  the 


122  MOLIERE 

'Ecole  des  Femmes'  was  the  first  play  in  which  Moliere 
made  manifest  his  bolder  characteristics,  it  was  a  comedy 
not  likely  to  please  those  who  never  would  relish  his  out- 
spoken frankness.  These  possessors  of  superfine  delicacy 
were  not  prurient  prudes,  at  least  not  all  of  them;  they 
were  sensitive  creatures  who  looked  to  literature  for  sub- 
tleties of  sentiment  and  etherealities  of  treatment  of  a 
kind  wholly  foreign  to  Moliere's  masculine  temperament. 
In  the  nineteenth  century  Poe  emerged  as  a  specimen 
of  this  class,  declaring  that  La  Motte  Fouque  was  worth 
fifty  Molieres.  Men  and  women  of  an  ultra  immaterial- 
ity like  Poe's  want  to  see  life  sublimated;  and  they  are 
not  attracted  to  a  writer  who  deals  with  it  in  out- 
spoken fashion.  They  do  not  care  for  Moliere,  as  they 
do  not  care  for  Montaigne  or  for  Rabelais,  with  whom 
Moliere  had  so  much  in  common.  Their  supersensitive 
shrinking  from  the  actual  leads  them  to  avert  their 
gaze  from  much  that  is  healthily  natural;  and  they 
remind  us  of  Watteau,  who  said  that  nature  put  him 
out. 

Fortunately,  those  who  did  not  enjoy  the  bluntness 
of  tone,  the  frankness  of  humor,  the  fulness  of  flavor  in 
Moliere's  work  were  in  a  small  minority,  even  though 
they  included  a  few  men  and  women  of  prominence. 
Those  who  were  most  capable  of  appreciating  the  full 
value  of  Moliere's  new  play  were  prompt  in  its  praise. 
Boileau  published  a  set  of  stanzas  in  which  he  encouraged 
Moliere  to  go  on  with  the  good  work.  To  us  to-day 
Boileau's  critical  code  may  seem  unduly  restricted;  but 
the  man  himself  was  sincere  and  he  had  keen  perceptions. 
It  must  be  counted  to  his  credit  that  he  did  much 
to  make  the  public  understand  Moliere's  merits.  The 
satirical  critic  and  the  comic  dramatist  were  not  only 


'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS  123 

stanch  friends,  they  were  allies  in  a  common  cause;  they 
worshiped  nature  as  they  severally  understood  the  word, 
seeking  veracity,  shunning  the  fantastic,  rejoicing  in  the 
real;  and  this  attitude  of  theirs  was  a  novelty  then  when 
tales  and  plays  were  laid  in  a  world  of  unreality  and 
when  the  hollow  absurdities  of  the  'Grand  Cyrus'  were 
still  acclaimed.  The  simplicity,  the  sincerity  which1 
Boileau  preached  Moliere  practised;  and  thus  each  of 
them  buttressed  the  other. 

But  it  was  not  only  by  Boileau  that  Moliere  was  then 
heartened;  Louis  XIV  also  took  sides  with  him  and 
accorded  him  a  signal  mark  of  the  royal  favor.  Late 
in  the  spring  of  1663,  while  the  controversy  over  the  'Ecole 
des  Femmes*  was  still  raging,  the  king  gratified  a  large 
number  of  men  of  letters  by  granting  annual  pensions  for 
their  encouragement.  Corneille  received  two  thousand 
livres  as  "the  foremost  dramatic  poet  of  the  world." 
Racine,  then  an  almost  unknown  beginner,  received  eight 
hundred,  as  a  "French  poet."  And  Moliere  received  one 
thousand  as  an  "excellent  comic  poet."  He  was  the  only 
actor  included  in  this  royal  benefaction;  and  the  pension 
thus  served  to  mark  him  as  a  man  of  letters,  having  an 
established  position  in  literature.  Probably  this  royal 
recognition  at  this  time,  when  he  was  attacked  on  all  sides, 
was  as  welcome  as  the  money  itself. 

In  accordance  with  the  custom  of  the  time,  Moliere 
rimed  a  copy  of  verses  to  Louis  XIV,  thanking  the  monarch 
for  the  royal  gift.  In  his  happily  turned  lines,  bright  and 
brisk,  unpretending  and  easy,  Moliere  bade  his  muse 
disguise  herself  and  make  her  way  to  court,  to  present  his 
gratitude  to  the  king.  In  these  occasional  verses  there  is 
nothing  obsequious,  nothing  more  or  less  than  the  cir- 
cumstances demanded.  They  are  prettily  clever,  and 


124  MOLIERE 

their  rimes  are  prettily  polished;    but  they  do  not  display 
any  new  aspect  of  Moliere's  genius. 

About  the  same  time  he  published  also  the  'Ecole  des 
Femmes'  with  a  dedicatory  epistle  to  Madame,  wife  of 
Monsieur.  He  had  been  allowed  to  inscribe  the  'Ecole 
des  Maris'  to  her  husband,  the  patron  of  the  company; 
and  the  king  himself  had  accepted  the  dedication  of  the 
'Facheux/  augmented  by  the  character  he  had  suggested. 
Moliere's  next  comedy,  it  may  be  noted  here,  was  to  be 
inscribed  to  the  queen-mother,  Anne  of  Austria.  That 
these  four  plays  could  be  presented  in  rapid  succession 
to  the  four  foremost  figures  of  the  kingdom  is  evidence 
that  Moliere's  position  was  then  solidly  established.  That 
he  should  have  selected  his  dedicatees  so  carefully  may 
have  been  due  to  his  desire  to  make  friends  at  court, 
against  the  time  when  he  might  need  them,  after  he  had 
composed  the  stronger  plays  which  were  perhaps  already 
beginning  to  take  shape  in  his  mind. 

IV 

To  the  attacks  on  the  '  Precieuses  Ridicules '  Moliere  had 
paid  no  attention;  to  those  on  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  he 
finally  resolved  to  retort.  He  never  lacked  courage  to  hit 
hard  when  he  thought  it  worth  while;  and  he  was  now 
emboldened  by  the  public  praise  of  Boileau  and  by  the 
receipt  of  the  royal  pension.  But  how  was  he  to  reply 
to  his  adversaries  ?  He  might  have  accepted  the  custom 
of  the  time  and  prepared  a  pamphlet,  which  was  the 
seventeenth  century  equivalent  of  the  nineteenth  century 
magazine  article  and  of  the  twentieth  century  authorized 
interview.  Moiiere,  however,  was  an  actor  before  he  was 
a  man  of  letters;  and  the  printed  page  probably  seemed  to 


'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS  125 

him  to  lack  the  sharpness  of  the  spoken  word.  He  was  a 
playwright,  after  all;  and  he  felt  that  his  own  stage  was 
the  proper  platform  for  his  parry  and  counter-thrust. 
Although  the  habit  of  the  rimed  prologue  and  epilogue 
did  not  obtain  in  France,  Moliere  was  the  orator  of  the 
company  and  he  was  free  to  say  whatever  he  pleased. 
A  speech,  however,  could  be  spoken  but  once;  it  could 
survive  only  in  the  memories  of  those  who  might  chance 
to  hear  it;  it  could  not  have  either  the  permanence 
or  the  reverberation  that  Moliere  was  seeking.  Yet  he 
was  not  at  a  loss  for  long;  with  his  habitual  ingenuity 
he  found  a  new  way  of  accomplishing  his  purpose. 

On  the  first  of  June,  1663,  ne  brought  out  a  one  act 
comedy  in  prose,  the  '  Critique  de  1'Ecole  des  Femmes,' 
presenting  it  immediately  after  the  performance  of  the 
'Ecole  des  Femmes,'  still  at  the  height  of  its  popularity. 
In  general,  Moliere  did  not  care  to  go  far  afield  in  search 
for  novelty  of  form,  content  to  use  the  framework  which 
had  already  won  the  favor  of  the  playgoers;  but  in  this 
new  venture  he  displayed  the  same  originality  which  had 
enabled  him  to  find  the  novel  formula  of  the  comedy- 
ballet,  employed  in  the  '  Facheux.'  He  devised  a  play  of  a \ 
new  kind,  a  play  which  was  only  a  series  of  conversations, 
a  play  without  a  plot  and  yet  possessing  that  needed 
backbone  of  the  comic  drama,  the  contrast  of  character ' 
with  character.  Slight  as  it  is,  without  any  external  ac- 
tion, with  no  love-story  at  all,  with  only  a  succession  of 
dialogues  setting  forth  the  antithesis  of  critical  theories, 
the  'Critique  de  1'Ecole  des  Femmes'  is  a  little  mas- 
iterpiece  of  playmaking  skill;  and  it  is  one  of  the  most 
adroit  and  characteristic  of  Moliere's  comedies. 

He    managed    to   give   this    string   of  conversations    a 
movement  of  its  own  and  even  to  work  up  to  a  climax, 


126  MOLIERE 

by  the  device  of  peopling  it  with  a  gallery  of  portraits 
taken  from  contemporary  life,  each  of  the  characters  com- 
ing on  in  turn  just  when  its  arrival  would  refresh  the  dis- 
cussion. In  this  comedy,  as  in  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules' 
in  which  he  was  also  making  fun  of  the  foibles  of  con- 
temporary society,  he  laid  the  story  in  a  drawing-room, 
relinquishing  the  street  scene  of  the  comedy-of-masks, 
most  convenient  for  his  plays  of  intrigue.  In  defending 
himself,  Moliere  is  again  assailing  a  sham,  for  he  is  hold- 
ing up  to  scorn  the  pedants  who  abused  his  play  and 
the  supersensitives  who  pretended  to  be  shocked  by  his 
plainness  of  speech. 

Two  cousins  are  receiving — one  of  them  Uranie,  a  little 
the  elder,  and  endowed  with  the  mature  common  sense  of 
a  healthy-minded  woman;  the  other  Elise,  keen-witted, 
quick-tongued,  possessing  a  sharp  sense  of  humor  and  a 
pretty  turn  for  irony.  Their  first  visitor  is  Climene,  a 
prudish  precieuse,  who  pours  out  the  vials  of  her  wrath 
upon  Moliere' s  comedy.  Next  an  absurd  Marquis  arrives, 
stuffed  with  prejudice,  and  incapable  of  thinking  for  him- 
self. Climene  had,  if  not  arguments  against  the  play, 
at  least  opinions;  but  the  Marquis,  although  consumed 
with  conceit,  can  only  echo  the  opinions  he  has  chanced 
to  hear.  Then  in  comes  Dorante,  an  accomplished  man 
of  the  world,  clear-headed  and  open-minded;  and  he  takes 
up  the  defense  of  Moliere,  coming  to  the  rescue  of  Uranie, 
as  Elise  has  pretended  to  be  converted  to  the  hostile  cause. 
Finally,  there  appears  one  Lysidas,  a  rival  poet,  who 
begins  by  empty  compliments  for  the  play,  and  who  ends 
by  declaring  it  beneath  contempt  as  entirely  contrary  to 
the  rules  of  dramatic  art.  Dorante  has  no  difficulty  in 
demolishing  this  biased  critic,  exposing  his  petty  pedantry 
and  going  to  the  root  of  the  matter  by  declaring  that  the 


'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS  127 

one  unbreakable  rule  is  to  please.  And  at  last  when  every 
point  of  view  has  been  presented  a  servant  declares  that 
supper  is  ready;  and  this  brings  the  little  piece  to  an 
end. 

Marvelous  is  the  variety  and  the  vivacity  which  Moli- 
ere managed  to  impart  to  what  is,  after  all,  only  a  con- 
versation, only  a  dialogued  essay  in  criticism,  only  a  debate 
over  the  principles  of  the  dramatic  art.  It  is  a  conver- 
sation, always  keeping  the  tone  of  real  talk,  easy  and 
unacademic,  flowing  and  graceful.  It  is  as  abundant  in 
humor  as  it  is  in  good  humor;  and  it  is  as  fair  as  any  one 
had  a  right  to  demand.  Both  sides  are  allowed  to  have 
the  floor  and  at  length;  and  while  Moliere  entrusted  his 
defense  to  the  more  sensible  and  sympathetic  characters, 
he  let  the  foolish  figures  say  their  say  in  their  own  fashion. 

It  is  not  only  by  its  briskness  of  dialogue  and  of  dialectic 
that  the  little  play  is  sustained,  but  also  by  the  skill  with 
which  several  characters  are  contrasted.  Specially  inge- 
nious is  the  later  attitude  of  Elise,  pretending  to  go  over 
to  the  enemy,  and  thus  intensifying  the  feebleness  of  the 
accusations  brought  against  the  play.  That  Moliere  him- 
self impersonated  the  egregious  Marquis  is  highly  probable, 
although  not  absolutely  certain.  It  is  certain,  however, 
that  he  entrusted  the  clever  Elise  to  his  young  bride,  who 
apparently  made  her  first  appearance  on  the  stage  in  this 
character,  in  which  it  was  her  chief  duty  to  defend  her 
husband  against  malicious  attack.  Moliere  exercised  his 
usual  excellent  judgment  in  thus  bringing  his  inexperienced 
wife  before  the  public  in  a  part  which  was  not  too  heavy 
for  her  young  shoulders  and  which  was  likely  to  be  sympa- 
thetic to  the  spectators. 

That  a  play  without  story  or  action  or  love-interest, 
with  nothing  but  character-drawing  and  brilliant  conversa- 


i28  MOLIERE 

tion,  dealing  with  a  purely  literary  theme  and  discussing 
the  technicalities  of  dramaturgy — that  such  a  play  could 
hold  the  interest  of  Parisian  audiences  again  and  again,  is 
high  testimony  to  the  alert  intelligence  and  the  diffused 
culture  of  the  burgher  class  which  supplied  the  main  body 
of  spectators.  "Nor  can  he  whose  business  it  is  to  address 
the  mind  be  understood  where  there  is  not  a  moderate 
degree  of  intellectual  activity,"  so  George  Meredith  de- 
clared. The  more  sympathetic  response  of  his  audience 
is  one  obvious  reason  for  the  superiority  of  Moliere  over 
Plautus  and  Terence,  who  had  to  please  the  riffraff  of  the 
Mediterranean  and  the  rude  mob  of  Roman  freedmen. 


If  Moliere  had  vainly  supposed  that  his  clever  retort 
would  silence  his  assailants  and  leave  them  speechless, 
he  soon  found  out  his  mistake.  The  assault  was  shriller 
and  more  envenomed  than  ever  before;  and  now  that  he 
had  shown  his  adversaries  how  to  put  dramatic  criticism 
into  a  play,  half  a  dozen  little  pieces,  patterned  on  the 
'Critique  deTEcole  des  Femmes,'  were  performed  or 
published.  In  the  forefront  of  the  attack  were  certain 
actor-authors  of  the  rival  company  at  the  Hotel  de  Bour- 
gogne.  They  were  annoyed  by  the  sharp  competition 
of  Moliere's  company,  not  only  in  the  capital  but  at^court 
also.  The  Hotel  de  Bourgogne  was  the  long-established 
theater,  and  its  actors  had  the  right  to  style  themselves 
"the  only  royal  company."  Its  members  liked  to  think  of 
Moliere's  company  as  a  band  of  new-comers  fit  only  ror 
farce-acting  and  entirely  without  repute  in  the  nobler  art 
of  tragedy.  Moreover,  these  comic  performers  were  not 
under  the  immediate  patronage  of  the  king;  they  were  only 


'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS  129 

the  "company  of  Monsieur/'  And  yet  Louis  XIV  had 
taken  a  fancy  to  Moliere's  troupe  and  had  ordered  it  to  act 
before  the  court  far  more  often  than  the  company  of  the 
Hotel  de  Bourgogne,  which  was  directly  under  his  royal 
patronage. 

Their  bitter  attacks  on  Moliere  did  not  win  back  the 
favor  of  the  king  to  the  rival  company;  indeed,  they  may 
have  aroused  in  him  a  curiosity  to  see  how  Moliere  would 
meet  them.  Louis  XIV  again  ordered  the  company  of 
comedians  to  perform  before  him  at  Versailles;  and  a 
week  before  they  appeared  he  told  Moliere  to  take  this 
opportunity  to  retort  on  his  adversaries.  This  is  the  ex- 
planation of  the  title  and  of  the  content  of  the  *  Impromptu 
de  Versailles/  a  comedy  in  one  act  in  prose,  produced  on 
October  fourteenth,  1663.  It  was  the  earliest  of  Moliere's 
plays  to  be  originally  acted  at  Versailles,  and  composed 
especially  for  Louis  XIV — the  'Facheux'  having  been  per- 
formed first  at  Vaux  by  request  of  Fouquet.  That  it  was 
written  in  haste  by  the  king's  command  Moliere  is  very 
careful  to  make  plain  in  the  play  itself,  wherein  we  find 
three  times  repeated  a  formal  assertion  of  the  royal  re- 
sponsibility for  the  little  play. 

The  *  Impromptu  de  Versailles'  is  almost  the  slightest 
of  Moliere's  pieces;  but  it  is  not  the  least  significant  or 
the  least  interesting.  It  is  only  an  unpretending  trifle, 
and  the  haste  in  which  it  was  put  together  would  prevent 
its  being  anything  more.  But  it  is  adroit  and  ingenious; 
it  is,  indeed,  exactly  what  it  ought  to  be  for  its  special 
occasion.  It  has  a  certain  likeness  to  the  'Frogs'  of 
Aristophanes,  to  the  'Rehearsal'  of  Buckingham  and  to 
the  'Critic'  of  Sheridan;  and  it  shows  Moliere  discussing 
the  art  of  acting,  just  as  Shakspere  made  Hamlet  discuss 
it  with  the  Players.  Its  scene  is  laid  on  the  stage  of  the 


130  MOLIERE 

theater   at   Versailles.     The   characters   of  the    play   are 
Moliere  himself  and  all  the  other  members  of  his  company. 
The  king  will  be  there  in  a  few  minutes  to  witness  the 
performance  of  the  new  play  Moliere  has  written  to  order 
in  a  hurry;  but  the  actors  have  not  had  time  to  learn  their 
parts  properly  and  they  plead  for  postponement — unavail- 
ingly,  since  the  king  has  commanded,  and  the  king  must 
be  obeyed.     Moliere  encourages   them   all,   describes   to 
each  the  character  he  or  she  is  supposed  to  be  representing, 
explains  how  he  wants  this  or  that  speech  spoken,  and 
!  lets  the  rehearsal  lapse  every  now  and  then  while  they  talk 
'over  the  predicament  they  are  in  and  the  imperativeness 
jof  the  royal  desire. 

We  see  Moliere  the  actor  imitating  the  chief  per- 
formers of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne;  we  see  Moliere  the 
stage-manager  conducting  a  rehearsal;  we  see  Moliere 
the  author  discussing  the  reason  why  he  has  chosen  to  do 
one  thing  and  not  another;  we  see  Moliere  the  man  de- 
fending himself  and  his  family  in  manly  fashion  against 
unworthy  attacks.  We  see  the  various  members  of  the 
company,  devoted  to  their  chief,  and  yet  chafing  against 
the  necessity  of  acting  before  they  are  ready.  We  see  the 
important  position  held  by  Madeleine  Bejart,  who  does 
not  hesitate  to  give  advice  and  who  is  always  listened  to 
courteously.  We  see  the  impeccable  La  Grange,  with 
whom  the  author  is  always  so  well  pleased  that  he  never 
needs  to  give  him  any  direct  instruction.  We  see  Moliere' s 
own  wife,  young  and  gay  and  happy,  teasing  her  husband 
with  the  suggestion  that  he  ought  to  write  a  play  in  which 
he  could  act  all  the  parts;  and  when  he  tells  her  to  hold 
her  tongue,  she  retorts  that  he  would  not  have  spoken 
that  way  a  year  or  two  earlier,  and  that  marriage  changes 
a  man  for  the  worse.  This  amusing  little  passage  at  arms 


'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES'  AND  ITS  SEQUELS  131 

is  evidence  of  the  good  feeling  which  still  governed  the 
relations  of  the  bride  and  groom. 

It  remains  to  be  said  that  there  are  a  few  lines  in  the 
'Impromptu  de  Versailles'  which  we  cannot  help  regretting 
for  Moliere' s  sake.  He  chooses  to  mention  by  name  one 
of  those  who  had  attacked  him,  a  little-known  playwright, 
Boursault.  However  irresistible  his  temptation,  this  hold- 
ing up  to  public  obloquy  of  a  fellow-writer  seems  unworthy 
of  Moliere.  He  is  wiser  when  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of 
one  of  his  company  the  assertion  that  the  best  retort  to  his 
assailants  was  to  write  a  new  play  which  should  succeed 
like  its  predecessors.  This  advice  which  Moliere  thus 
gave  himself  he  acted  on  for  the  rest  of  his  career.  He 
had  paid  no  attention  to  any  attack  before  he  wrote  the 
*  Critique  de  1'Ecole  des  Femmes';  and  he  did  not  return 
to  the  charge  again  after  he  had  brought  out  the  'Im- 
promptu de  Versailles.'  Never  again  did  he  trouble  or  turn 
aside  to  pick  up  any  of  the  quarrels  that  were  thrust  upon 
him.  He  went  on  his  own  way  and  he  did  the  work  he 
found  ready  to  his  hand. 

VI 

Unimportant  as  these  two  little  plays  may  be,  we  should 
greatly  regret  not  to  have  them.  They  may  add  little; 
to  his  enduring  fame;  but  they  add  materially  to  our 
acquaintance  with  Moliere  himself.  We  might  deduce 
from  them  Moliere' s  theory  of  dramatic  art.  It  is  herqf 
that  he  put  himself  on  record  as  holding — what  Corneille 
and  Racine  also  held,  what  every  practical  playwright 
must  hold — that  the  chiefest  rule  of  all  is  to  please  the 
public.  Here  he  was  in  agreement  with  the  Aristotle 
whom  his  opponents  threw  up  against  him;  Aristotle  dis- 


132  MOLIERE 

trusted  the  verdict  of  specialists  and  preferred  the  judg- 
ment of  the  cultivated  public.  Moliere  showed  that  he, 
could  talk  about  the  rules  as  well  as  any  one  else;  and  he 
I  asserted  that  he  kept  the  spirit  of  theVlaw  eVen  if  he  might 
seem  sometimes  to  break  the  letter.  Thus  he  is  in  accord 
with  Ben  Jonson,  when  he  asl^ed,  "Let  Aristotle. and. oth- 
ers have  their  dues;  but  if  we  can  make  further  discov- 
eries of  truth  and  fitness  than  they  why  are  we  envied  ?" 
Moliere  had  also  the  courage  to  declare  his  conviction 
that  comedy  is  more  difficult  than  tragedy,  both  to  act 
and  to  write,  since  comedy  deals  with  everyday  life  with 
which  we  are  all  familiar,  whereas  heroic  pieces  surpass 
our  ordinary  understanding  and  we  have  no  standard  to 
gage  them  wisely.  He  proclaimed  that  it  is  the  business 
of  comedy  to  represent  all  mankind,  especially  in  the  comic 
author's  own  century.  Furthermore  he  denied  that  he 
had  ever  put  into  a  play  any  individual  baldly  reproduced 
from  actual  life — a  denial  that  some  of  his  commentators 
seem  stall  imwilling  t«~-acc0pt. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
MOLIERE  AND  LOUIS  XIV 

I 

THE  '  Impromptu  de  Versailles/  the  first  play  of  Moli- 
ere's  written  to  the  king's  order,  was  speedily  followed 
by  others,  commanded  by  Louis  XIV  and  composed  espe- 
cially for  performance  at  court.  It  would  be  idle  to  main- 
tain that  these  plays,  prepared  for  particular  occasions 
and  cramped  by  the  rigorous  limitations  of  the  court- 
ballet,  have  greatly  contributed  to  raise  Moliere's  reputa- 
tion with  posterity.  But  the  cleverness  and  the  ease  with 
which  he  carried  out  the  king's  wishes  did  raise  him 
higher  in  the  favor  of  the  monarch,  who  had  taken  all 
power  into  his  own  hands.  Perhaps  we  must  consider 
these  lighter  trifles,  put  together  hurriedly  to  meet  the 
caprice  of  the  king,  as  the  price  that  Moliere  paid  for  the 
privilege  of  writing  his  later  and  nobler  plays  to  please 
himself,  the  ampler  and  deeper  comedies  in  which  he  was 
able  to  express  himself  more  completely. 

Yet  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  Moliere  was  work- 
ing against  the  grain  in  trying  to  gratify  the  monarch,  or 
that  he  did  not  find  amusement  in  the  exercise  of  his 
inventive  ingenuity.  Probably  the  association  with  the 
sovereign  and  with  the  court  was  as  pleasant  to  him  as  it 
was  profitable.  Louis  XIV  was  then  young;  he  had  only 
recently  come  into  power;  he  was  ardent  in  the  pursuit 

133 


i34  MOLIERE 

of  pleasure.  He  enjoyed  every  kind  of  theatrical  enter- 
tainment, delighting  more  particularly  in  musical  spectacle. 
He  was  good-looking  and  graceful;  and  he  liked  to  figure 
in  the  court-ballets.  Popular  at  court  for  several  reigns, 
these  ballets  had  been  mostly  mythological  in  theme,  as 
unreal  as  they  were  elaborate,  setting  in  action  Minerva 
and  Venus,  the  muses  and  the  graces,  satyrs  and  nymphs. 
Their  plots  were  almost  always  forced  and  fantastic; 
and  the  interest  of  the  spectators  was  centered  on  the 
groups  of  dancers,  who  came  on  at  intervals  to  sing  and  to 
caper  in  character. 

In  the  'Facheux'  Moliere  had  shown  how  it  was  pos- 
sible to  get  away  from  the  frippery  of  mythology  and  to 
devise  a  genuine  play,  which  would  justify  a  succession  of 
songs  and  dances  quite  as  well  as  the  earlier  and  emptier 
schemes  introducing  gods  and  goddesses.  In  that  comedy- 
ballet,  simple  as  it  was,  he  had  proved  that  a  web  of  true 
comedy  might  be  embroidered  at  will  with  the  interludes 
of  singing  and  dancing  which  characterized  the  ballet. 
The  comedy-ballet,  as  Moliere  thus  presented  it,  was  less 
pretentious  and  less  fatiguing  than  the  earlier  type  with  its 
exaggerated  grandiloquence;  and  it  was  more  amusing, 
because  it  contained  within  the  spectacle  what  was  after 
all  a  real  play,  however  slight  this  might  be. 

Stripped  of  these  needless  accessories  the  'Facheux* 
is  but  a  single  act.  So  is  the  first  comedy-ballet,  which 
Moliere  devised  for  the  king  himself,  the /Mariagejlctfce^- 
It  is  in  one  act,  in  prose;  but  it  was  firstTjperformed  in 
January,  1664,  at  the  Louvre,  with  a  variety  of  songs  and 
dances,  which  expanded  it  to  three  acts.  It  was  written 
for  the  king;  it  was  produced  before  him;  and  it  was  also 
performed  by  him — for  he  himself  appeared  as  a  gipsy 
in  one  of  the  interludes.  The  plot  has  the  needful  sim- 


MOLIERE  AND  LOUIS  XIV  135 

plicity;  it  turns  on  a  single  suggestion,  presented  from  a 
variety  of  aspects.  Sganarelle,  the  same  fixed  type  that 
Moliere  had  impersonated  more  than  once  before,  is  a 
man  of  fifty,  and  he  is  thinking  of  getting  married.  But 
he  does  not  know  his  own  mind  two  minutes  together. 
He  consults  a  friend;  he  consults  two  philosophers,  one 
after  the  other;  he  even  consults  a  pair  of  gipsy  girls; 
he  has  a  disquieting  interview  with  his  chosen  bride;  and 
he  overhears  a  still  more  disquieting  interview  between 
her  and  one  of  her  admirers.  Finally  he  resolves  to  break 
off  the  match;  and  the  chosen  bride's  father  sends  in  her 
gentle-spoken  brother,  who  insists  either  on  a  duel  to  the 
death  or  a  marriage  on  the  spot.  And  Sganarelle  accepts 
immediate  matrimony  in  preference  to  immediate  mor- 
tality. 

This  is  the  story  of  the  play  in  one  act;  yet  it  lends 
itself  to  a  host  of  other  consultations  and  of  other  mis- 
adventures of  Sganarelle,  episodes  of  singing  and  dancing, 
which  Moliere  ingeniously  scatters  through  the  action, 
and  which  could  be  omitted  without  loss  when  the  play 
had  to  stand  on  its  own  merits.  There  is  genuine  comedy 
in  the  perplexities  of  Sganarelle;  and  there  is  rich  humor 
in  the  two  philosophers  whom  he  seeks  to  consult.  The 
pedant  with  his  mouth  crammed  with  scholastic  phrases 
was  one  of  the  accepted  types  of  the  comedy-of-masks; 
but  in  the  hands  of  the  Italians  it  presented  only  a  carica- 
ture of  external  characteristics.  Moliere  had  had  a  solid 
training  in  philosophy  himself;  the  vocabulary  of  the 
schools  was  perfectly  familiar  to  him;  and  here  he  turns 
it  to  humorous  uses,  caricaturing  the  essential  qualities  of 
the  philosophy  then  going  out  of  fashion.  Having  utilized 
what  are  really  three  of  the  fixed  types  of  the  comedy-of- 
masks,  Moliere  employs  again  its  customary  and  con- 


136  MOLIERE 

venient  scene,  the  open  square,  with  the  houses  of  four  of  < 
the  characters  all  on  the  stage  together — those  of  the  two 
philosophers,  that  of  the  bride,  and  that  of  Sganarelle 
himself.  As  usual,  the  acting  took  place  in  the  neutral 
ground  between  the  houses,  very  much  as  it  had  taken 
place  in  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes/ 

ii 

Moliere's  young  wife,  who  had  made  her  first  appearance 
in  the  'Critique  de  1'Ecole  des  Femmes,'  and  who  had 
appeared  again  in  the  'Impromptu  de  Versailles/  had  no 
part  in  the  'Mariage  Force.'  Two  years  after  the  wedding 
she  had  borne  him  his  first  son,  only  ten  days  before  the 
'Manage  Force*  was  performed  at  the  Louvre.  A  month 
later  this  child  was  baptised,  the  king  and  his  sister-in-law, 
Madame  (the  wife  of  Monsieur)  being  godfather  and  god- 
mother, both  of  them  by  proxy.  It  was  not  uncommon 
for  the  sovereign  to  stand  godfather  to  the  children  of  his 
servants;  and  this  is  not  the  exceptional  honor  that  it 
might  seem.  Yet,  in  this  instance,  it  had  special  signifi- 
cance in  that  it  testified  to  the  king's  disbelief  in  certain 
vile  calumnies  which  had  been  heaped  on  Moliere  and 
which  need  not  be  recalled. 

If  Mademoiselle  Moliere  had  to  forego  the  pleasure  of 
appearing  before  the  court  in  the  'Mariage  Force,'  her 
husband  more  than  made  this  up  to  her  in  the  part  he 
prepared  for  her  in  the  following  play,  the  'Princesse 
d'Elide,'  the  first  good  part  she  had  been  entrusted  with, 
a  precursor  of  the  important  characters  which  her  husband 
was  soon  to  devise  for  her.  The  new  play  was  written 
to  take  its  place  in  the  most  sumptuous  entertainment  yet 
given  at  Versailles,  the  week-long  spectacle,  called  the 


MOLIERE  AND  LOUIS  XIV  137 

'Pleasures  of  the  Enchanted  Island/  Day  after  day, 
there  were  processions,  maskings,  concerts,  tiltings  and 
bravery  of  all  sorts,  in  which  Moliere  and  his  company 
bore  their  share,  appearing  by  the  side  of  the  most  brilliant 
nobles  of  the  court.  Ostensibly  the  entertainment  was 
for  the  queen  and  the  queen-mother;  actually  it  seems 
to  have  been  a  delicate  attention  of  the  young  king  for  his 
mistress,  Mademoiselle  de  la  Valliere. 

It  was  on  the  second  day  of  the  festival,  on  May  eighth, 
1664,  that  Moliere's  new  play  was  performed.  The 
'Princesse  d'Elide'  was  called  "a  gallant  comedy";  it 
was  in  five  acts;  and  it  was  to  have  been  in  verse,  but 
Moliere  had  time  to  rime  only  the  first  act  and  one  scene 
of  the  second,  leaving  the  rest  in  prose  and  not  working 
out  the  later  scenes  as  elaborately  as  he  had  intended. 
Possibly  there  is  little  loss  in  this  haste,  since  the  'Prin- 
cesse  d'Elide'  never  could  have  been  worthy  of  its  author. 
Perhaps  because  both  the  queen  and  the  queen-mother 
were  Spaniards,  Moliere  chose  to  take  over  a  Spanish  plot, 
that  of  Moreto's  'Desden  con  el  Desden/  While  he 
borrowed  the  story  he  dealt  with  it  very  freely,  simplifying 
the  structure  and  harmonizing  it  with  French  taste.  But 
the  result  is  not  satisfactory;  for  the  admirers  of  French 
comedy  there  remains  too  much  Moreto,  and  there  is  not 
enough  Moliere.  The  lyrical  luxuriance  of  the  Spanish 
play  is  attenuated;  and  we  do  not  get  in  return  the  flavor 
of  Moliere's  own  humor.  His  handling  of  the  rather 
highflown  theme  cannot  be  called  perfunctory,  but  it  is  not 
sympathetic.  There  was  no  kinship  between  Moliere's 
genius  and  that  of  the  peninsular  playwrights;  and  he  lost 
far  more  than  he  gained  when  he  tried  to  follow  in  their 
footsteps.  After  'Don  Garcie/  the  'Princesse  d'Elide' 
is  the  least  interesting  of  all  Moliere's  plays;  it  is  rarely* 


138  MOLIERE 

read,  and  it  is  never  acted.  No  doubt  it  filled  its  place 
on  the  program  acceptably  enough;  and  probably  few  of 
the  spectators  were  bored  by  its  rather  strained  sentiment 
and  by  its  rather  mechanical  fun. 

Warned  by  his  failure  in  'Don  Garcie'  Moliere  himself 
did  not  attempt  the  heroic  part,  even  though  the  heroine 
was  to  be  impersonated  by  his  wife.  He  gave  the  lover 
to  La  Grange  and  he  made  over  for  himself  the  low  comedy 
part;  but  the  gracioso  of  Moreto  did  not  lend  itself  to 
Moliere's  histrionic  veracity.  Moliere  is  at  his  best  as  a 
humorist  only  when  he  is  dealing  with  human  nature  as 
it  is;  he  may  exaggerate  almost  to  caricature — indeed, 
he  often  does  this  deliberately;  but  he  needs  always  a 
basis  of  reality.  Quite  possibly  this  part  of  the  court- 
fool,  Moron,  that  Moliere  himself  performed,  was  amusing 
in  the  acting;  but  on  the  printed  page  its  fun  is  pale. 

In  the  summer  the  play  was  repeated  several  times 
before  the  court  at  Saint-Germain;  and  in  the  fall  Moliere 
brought  it  out  at  the  Palais-Royal,  allowing  the  playgoers 
of  Paris  to  behold  the  spectacle  which  had  pleased  the 
king  and  the  courtiers.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  was 
set  off  with  all  its  interludes  of  singing  and  dancing,  it 
could  not  long  retain  the  favor  of  spectators  who  had  paid 
their  way  into  the  theater,  and  after  twenty-five  perform- 
ances it  was  withdrawn,  not  to  be  acted  again  during 
Moliere's  lifetime.  When  the  novelty  of  its  spectacular 
accessories  had  worn  off,  the  thinness  of  the  piece  itself 
was  revealed;  and  the  playgoers  of  Paris  were  proba- 
bly disappointed  at  not  finding  in  a  play  of  Moliere's 
the  qualities  he  had  accustomed  them  to  expect  in  his 
comedies. 


MOLIERE  AND  LOUIS  XIV  139 

III 

Four  days  after  the  performance  of  the  'Princesse 
d'Elide'  and  also  included  in  the  'Pleasures  of  the  En- 
chanted Island'  there  was  the  first  performance  of  three 
acts  of  'TartufFe/  The  'Princesse  d'Elide'  was  only  task 
work,  undertaken  to  meet  the  wishes  of  the  monarch; 
but  'Tartuffe'  was  of  all  Moliere's  plays  the  one  nearest 
to  his  own  heart,  the  one  in  which  he  put  the  most  of  him- 
self and  the  best  he  could  do.  It  was  also  the  one  play 
of  his  the  performance  of  which  was  allowed  at  last  only 
by  the  direct  intervention  of  Louis  XIV  himself.  Yet  the 
king  began  by  prohibiting  it.  In  the  official  account  of  the 
*  Pleasures  of  the  Enchanted  Island/  there  is  a  very  care- 
fully composed  paragraph  setting  forth  that  "although 
the  play  had  been  found  very  diverting,  the  king  knew 
that  there  was  so  great  a  likeness  between  those  whom  a 
veritable  devotion  has  put  on  the  road  to  heaven  and 
those  whom  a  vain  ostentation  of  good  works  does  not 
prevent  from  the  guilt  of  evil  deeds,  therefore  his  extreme 
delicacy  in  matters  of  religion  would  not  suffer  this  liken- 
ing of  vice  to  virtue,  one  of  which  might  be  taken  for  the 
other;  and  although  there  was  no  doubt  of  the  good  in- 
tention of  the  author,  the  king  forbade  its  public  per- 
formance and  deprived  himself  of  a  pleasure,  that  others, 
less  capable  of  a  just  discernment,  might  not  be  led  astray." 
The  monarch  did  not  absolutely  deprive  himself  of  the 
pleasure,  since  there  was  a  second  performance  of  these 
three  acts  before  him  in  September  of  that  same  year, 
1664. 

Yet  this  official  explanation  testifies  to  a  desire  to  treat 
Moliere  with  the  utmost  courtesy.  But  none  the  less  was 
'Tartuffe'  forbidden  by  royal  authority;  and  nearly  five 


140  MOLIERE 

years  were  to  elapse  before  the  king  was  finally  to  permit 
its  performance,  overruling  the  prohibitions  of  the  arch- 
bishop of  Paris  and  the  president  of  parliament.  It  was 
not  without  good  reason  that  Moliere  showed  himself 
always  ready  to  put  aside  his  own  work  and  to  undertake 
the  odd  jobs  of  playmaking  which  the  pleasure-loving 
young  monarch  imposed  on  him  from  time  to  time. 


IV 

"The  best  title  of  Louis  XIV  to  the  recollection  of 
posterity  is  the  protection  he  extended  to  Moliere,"  so 
Lord  Morley  has  declared;  "and  one  reason  why  this  was 
so  meritorious  is  that  Moliere' s  work  had  a  markedly 
critical  character,  in  reference  both  to  the  devout  and  to 
the  courtier.  But  Moliere  is  only  critical  by  accident. 
There  is  nothing  organically  negative  about  him;  and 
his  plays  are  the  pure  dramatic  presentation  of  a  peculiar 
civilization/'  The  civilization  that  Moliere  portrayed 
was  peculiar,  partly  because  of  the  conditions  which  had 
prevailed  in  France  during  the  infancy  and  youth  of  Louis 
XIV,  and  partly  because  of  the  personal  character  of  the 
ruler  himself. 

Francis  I  had  already  established  the  royal  authority, 
breaking  down  the  influence  of  the  feudal  nobles  in  the 
provinces,  and  seeking  to  center  all  power  in  Paris  in  the 
hands  of  the  sovereign.  Richelieu  took  up  the  work  of 
Francis  I  and  made  ready  to  substitute  autocracy  for  mere 
monarchy.  He  overrode  violently  all  laws  and  all  cus- 
toms which  might  in  any  way  limit  the  might  of  the  sover- 
eign. So  completely  did  he  consolidate  the  kingly  power 
that  it  survived  the  weak  rule  of  Mazarin,  marred  by  the 
petty  bickerings  and  murderous  intriguing  of  the  Fronde. 


MOLIERE  AND  LOUIS  XIV  141 

Louis  XIV  lived  through  the  Fronde  and  suffered  from 
it  and  was  humiliated  by  it.  What  he  was  then  forced  to 
see  intensified  his  resolve  that  he  himself,  when  he  took  the 
government  into  his  hands,  should  be  supreme,  with  no 
one  to  gainsay  his  royal  will.  He  meant  to  be  the  focus 
of  everything;  to  hold  all  command  in  his  own  control; 
to  let  no  one  shine  except  by  reflected  light  from  the  throne; 
to  be  the  center  of  the  solar  system.  It  was  as  though 
he  had  taken  to  heart  the  saying  set  him  as  a  copy  for  his 
boyish  writing-lessons:  "Homage  is  due  to  kings;  and 
they  may  do  whatever  they  choose." 

The  reign  of  Louis  XIV,  like  the  reign  of  Solomon, 
began  magnificently;  and  both  kings,  the  Frenchman 
and  the  Hebrew,  survived  to  see  the  failure  of  their  rule, 
the  misery  of  their  people,  and  the  pitiful  diminishing 
of  their  glory.  There  were  not  a  few  great  men  in  France, 
while  Louis  XIV  sat  on  the  throne;  but  the  king  himself 
was  not  one  of  them.  He  was  not  a  man  of  much  more 
than  ordinary  ability;  and  yet  he  was  not  without  a  cer- 
tain sly  cleverness.  He  had  a  shrewdness  of  his  own; 
he  had  abundant  taste;  he  had  the  knack  of  saying  the 
right  word  at  the  right  time;  he  was  wise  enough  never  to 
uncover  his  immense  ignorance,  the  result  of  his  neglected 
education.  He  was  as  lacking  in  depth  of  understanding 
and  in  breadth  of  outlook  as  he  was  in  solidity  of  knowl- 
edge. His  dominant  characteristics  were  pride  and  self- 
ishness; and  they  united  to  give  him  a  monstrous  egotism, 
even  surpassing  that  of  Napoleon,  without  being  sustained 
by  the  soaring  imagination  and  the  superb  energy  of  the 
Corsican  adventurer. 

He  was  supremely  proud  and  also  superlatively  vain, 
although  in  most  men  who  are  proud  the  larger  vice  in- 
hibits the  pettier.  He  set  up  statues  to  himself  in  his  own 


i42  MOLIERE 

lifetime;  and  during  his  reign  he  did  not  allow  a  single 
statue  to  be  put  up  to  any  of  his  predecessors.  He  erected 
Versailles,  where  he  was  free  from  all  comparison  with 
the  past  splendor  of  France,  and  where  he  caused  to  be 
strewn  broadcast  throughout  the  decorations  his  own 
boastful  emblem,  the  sun,  and  his  vainglorious  motto, 
declaring  that  he  had  "no  equal  among  many."  At 
Versailles,  which  he  had  created,  he  saw  only  his  own 
creatures,  the  courtiers  who  hung  on  his  nod  and  who 
prostrated  themselves  at  his  beck.  He  was  jealous  of 
the  ablest  of  his  ministers,  Colbert  and  Louvois,  at  times 
treating  them  harshly,  while  he  was  more  affable  toward 
their  feebler  successors  who  had  no  will  of  their  own  and 
whom  he  preferred  because  he  believed  that  he  had  trained 
them  himself.  He  was  ever  greedy  of  flattery,  although 
not  so  insatiable  in  his  youth  as  he  became  in  his  old  age, 
when  the  only  way  to  the  royal  favor  was  by  groveling 
servility.  Yet  even  when  he  had  just  ascended  the  throne 
he  was  always  expecting  a  compliment,  almost  demand- 
ing fulsome  eulogy,  and  never  declining  it,  however  gross 
or  abject  it  might  be.  He  took  himself  so  seriously  that 
this  incense  seemed  only  what  was  due  to  him.  He  was  so 
well  pleased  with  it  that  he  seems  never  to  have  despised 
those  who  proffered  it. 

His  selfishness  was  appalling.  In  all  France  he  cared 
for  no  one  and  for  nothing  but  himself  and  his  own  glory. 
In  public  affairs  he  held  himself  above  all  law,  overruling 
every  other  authority  in  the  state  without  scruple  or  hes- 
itation. In  his  private  life  he  disdained  to  be  bound  by 
any  code  of  morality  or  even  of  decency.  In  his  youth  he 
was  an  ardent  sensualist;  and  in  his  old  age  he  naturally 
became  a  narrow-minded  bigot.  He  flaunted  his  amor- 
ous intrigues,  sometimes  two  or  three  at  once,  in  the  face 


MOLIERE  AND  LOUIS  XIV  143 

of  the  queen,  in  the  eyes  of  the  whole  court  and  even  before 
the  people  of  France.  He  punished  severely  the  lady 
in  charge  who  sought  to  prevent  his  having  access  by 
night  to  the  apartments  of  the  queen's  maids  of  honor. 
He  legitimated  his  bastards,  even  those  he  had  by  Madame 
de  Montespan,  the  fruits  of  a  double  adultery,  which  he 
thus  forced  on  the  gaze  of  the  world.  He  had  no  con- 
sideration for  the  fatigue  or  the  health  even  of  those  whom 
he  cherished,  his  intimates,  his  own  family.  He  had  no 
regret,  no  kindly  feeling,  no  gentle  word  for  the  van- 
quished or  for  those  who  no  longer  pleased  him.  His 
own  personal  caprice  was  his  sole  law. 

What  his  sluggish  mind  and  his  arid  soul  most  delighted 
in  was  the  empty  ceremonial  of  Versailles.  He  found  un- 
failing pleasure  in  the  pettiness  of  it  all.  He  enjoyed  the 
routine  of  royalty;  and  in  the  incessant  direction  of  all  its 
details  he  was  as  hard-working  as  he  was  hard-hearted. 
He  was  glad  to  submit  himself  to  the  rigorous  slavery  of 
elaborate  etiquet  and  he  subjected  all  the  nobility  to  it, 
enforcing  their  attendance  upon  his  person,  to  the  neglect 
of  their  estates  and  the  ruin  of  their  fortunes.  He  did 
everything  in  public,  the  cynosure  of  an  adoring  group  of 
courtiers.  He  got  out  of  bed  and  washed  his  hands  and 
put  on  his  shirt,  while  a  throng  of  nobles  filled  his  bedroom. 
Every  day  had  its  regulated  duties  and  every  hour  had  its 
prescribed  occupations.  Life  at  Versailles  was  monoto- 
nous and  servile;  and  the  sole  relief  for  the  emptiness  of 
this  parade  was  the  spectacle  of  envious  rivalry  for  the 
favor  of  the  sovereign.  The  king  himself  did  not  care 
that  everybody  was  uncomfortably  lodged  in  the  ill- 
planned  and  unhealthy  palace;  he  was  himself  in  reality 
little  better  ofF  than  they  were.  The  outward  show  with 
its  gaudiness  gratified  him  daily  and  hourly,  so  that  he 


i44  MOLIERE 

gave  no  thought  to  the  discomfort,  the  dirt,  and  the  ever- 
present  possibility  of  disease.  He  had  no  more  regard 
for  the  convenience  or  the  health  of  the  courtiers  whose 
presence  there  was  due  to  his  direct  command,  than  he 
had  for  the  well-being  of  the  populace  of  the  kingdom, 
crushed  beneath  the  taxes  constantly  increasing  to  pay 
for  the  palace,  for  the  support  of  the  courtiers,  for  the 
lavish  wastefulness  of  the  royal  existence  and  for  the 
indefensible  wars  to  which  he  was  urged  by  his  lament- 
able avidity  for  glory. 

In  the  beginning  of  his  reign  he  gave  France  what  it 
most  needed,  order  and  stability  and  unity,  that  it  had 
never  had  before.  Toward  the  end  he  laid  waste  the 
Palatinate,  he  ordered  the  ruthless  religious  persecutions 
executed  by  brutal  dragoons;  and  he  revoked  the  Edict 
of  Nantes,  which  broke  up  countless  homes,  sowed  dis- 
cord in  countless  families,  drove  out  of  the  kingdom 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  most  useful  and  orderly  citizens; 
and  by  so  doing  he  deprived  France  of  a  most  precious 
element  in  its  population,  an  element  that  might  have 
wisely  guided  the  revolution  which  his  despotism  made 
inevitable.  Louis  XIV  was  the  perfect  embodiment  of 
the  king  by  divine  right.  In  him  we  see  this  autocratic 
principle  reduced  to  the  absurd.  He  acted  selfishly  al- 
ways, seeking  glory  in  ostentatious  living  and  in  useless 
war;  and  he  never  felt  any  obligation  to  consider  the  cost 
of  this  glory,  such  as  it  was.  He  has  been  acclaimed  as  a 
great  king;  but  assuredly  it  is  only  as  a  king  that  he  is 
great.  He  was  despicable  in  the  meanness  of  his  ambi- 
tion and  he  was  contemptible  in  the  intensity  of  his 
selfishness.  Behind  all  his  grandeur  his  essential  pettiness 
stands  forth. 


MOLIERE  AND  LOUIS  XIV  145 


If  Louis  XIV  was  the  king  whose  character  has  been* 
summarily  indicated  in  the  previous  paragraphs  and  if 
Moliere  was  the  man  whose  character  has  been  portrayed 
at  length  in  the  preceding  pages,  how  was  it  possible  that 
they  should  ever  have  worked  together,  that  the  play- 
wright should  have  pleased  the  sovereign  and  that  the 
monarch  should  have  sustained  the  dramatist  ?  The 
question  must  needs  be  put;  and  it  is  not  easy  to  answer. 

First  of  all,  it  must  be  noted  that  Moliere  saw  the  king 
only  in  the  earlier  years  of  his  reign  before  the  worst 
characteristics  of  the  monarch  had  had  time  to  be  made 
plain  or  even  to  be  developed.  When  Moliere  died  the 
king  was  only  thirty-five;  and  it  was  after  Moliere' s 
death  that  the  royal  selfishness  stiffened  into  inexorable 
habit.  The  defects  of  the  king's  character  and  the  ap- 
palling results  of  these  defects  were  scarcely  visible  during 
the  lifetime  of  Moliere,  who  shared  with  his  contem- 
poraries an  inherited  regard  and  admiration  for  the  sov- 
ereigns of  France.  Moliere  had  seen  the  meanness  and 
the  misery  of  the  Fronde;  and  he  was  glad  to  behold  the 
reins  of  government  firmly  held  by  a  strong  hand.  In 
the  beginning  of  the  young  king's  rule  there  was  peace  and 
prosperity  in  the  land;  and  the  monarch  got  the  credit 
even  if  Colbert  had  done  the  work.  There  was  a  general 
gladness  in  the  air,  and  the  buoyancy  of  hope.  Moliere, 
like  the  rest  of  his  countrymen,  was  captivated  by  the 
glamour  of  Louis  XIV's  youthful  grace. 

Then  Moliere  was  a  burgher  of  Paris,  with  no  love  for 
the  arrogant  nobles;  and  he  was  gratified  to  see  the  king 
take  power  from  them  and  keep  it  for  himself.  This 
action  of  the  sovereign,  while  it  might  raise  him  t6  a  still 


146  MOLIERE 

loftier  position,  tended  toward  a  juster  equality  among  his 
subjects.  Moliere  was  no  republican;  he  was  no  pre- 
cursor of  the  revolution;  he  was  no  advanced  thinker; 
he  had  no  aptitude  for  political  speculation;  he  accepted 
the  framework  of  government  as  he  found  it,  glad  that  the 
king  gave  to  the  country  the  internal  peace  it  sorely  needed. 
He  was  no  sycophant;  he  had  manly  self-respect;  but 
he  was  his  own  contemporary,  after  all;  and  like  his  con- 
temporaries in  France  he  unhesitatingly  accepted  the 
inequalities  of  society,  whatever  they  might  happen  to  be. 
There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  perceived  the  empti- 
ness of  rank  and  the  danger  that  comes  from  the  existence 
of  privileged  classes.  He  had  no  respect  for  place  in  itself, 
for  the  foolish  courtier,  for  the  dissolute  noble;  and  he 
took  every  occasion  to  laugh  at  the  one  and  to  hold  the 
other  up  to  scorn,  pleased  that  the  king  permitted  this. 
For  the  rest,  for  the  system  of  caste,  for  the  autocracy  of 
the  monarch,  he  cared  little,  accepting  a  state  of  things 
which  must  have  seemed  to  him  natural. 

Furthermore,  Moliere  had  a  hereditary  appointment 
in  the  monarch's  household.  Chaucer  was  a  "valet  of 
the  king's  chamber"  to  Edward  III;  and  Moliere  had  the 
humbler  post  of  the  valet  de  chambre  tapissier  to  Louis 
XIV.  This  royal  appointment  gave  him  a  personal  re- 
lation to  the  sovereign;  it  imposed  on  him  the  occasional 
task  of  making  the  king's  bed;  it  may  even  account  in 
some  measure  for  the  protection  now  and  again  extended 
to  him  by  the  monarch,  whose  pride  led  him  to  look  with 
favor  on  all  those  attached  to  his  own  person.  For  this 
protection,  however,  it  is  easy  to  find  other  reasons.  The 
king  in  his  youth  was  very  fond  of  the  theater;  and  Moliere 
brought  back  to  Paris  a  type  of  broadly  humorous  play, 
which  the  monarch  greatly  relished.  This  accounts  for 


MOLIERE  AND  LOUIS  XIV  147 

the  bestowal  first  of  the  Petit-Bourbon  and  secondly  of 
the  Palais-Royal.  Then,  as  Moliere  grew  in  stature  as  a 
comic  dramatist  and  began  to  put  more  of  the  realities 
of  life  into  his  comedies,  the  monarch  found  himself  pro- 
vided with  a  new  form  of  pleasure.  The  records  show 
that  Louis  XIV,  as  might  have  been  expected,  greatly 
preferred  comedy  to  tragedy;  and  in  the  acting  of  comedy 
Moliere' s  company  was  far  superior  to  the  rival  organiza- 
tions. This  in  itself  was  a  reason  why  the  ruler  should 
later  take  the  company  under  his  own  royal  patronage. 
This  would  explain  the  king's  suggestion  of  a  new  char- 
acter to  be  added  to  the  'Facheux';  and  also  his  com- 
manding Moliere  to  retort  on  his  enemies  with  the  *  Im- 
promptu de  Versailles.' 

Probably  Louis  XIV,  entrenched  in  his  own  pride, 
found  pleasure  in  Moliere' s  exposure  of  the  precieuse 
and  of  the  marquis  and  of  the  hypocrite.  Probably 
again  the  sovereign  was  so  secure  in  his  supremacy  that 
he  felt  no  fear  of  any  social  disintegration,  such  as  would 
have  influenced  a  usurper  like  Napoleon,  who  declared 
at  St.  Helena  that  he  would  never  have  permitted  the 
first  performance  of  'TartufFe/  Under  Napoleon  'Tar- 
tuffe'  would  have  been  suppressed  and  its  author  exiled; 
and  under  Louis  XIV  it  was  performed  and  its  author 
rewarded.  This  much  must  be  set  down  to  the  credit  of 
Louis  XIV.  That  the  king  really  saw  and  felt  the  full 
purport  of  that  play  is  very  unlikely;  and  it  is  still  more 
unlikely  that  he  ever  suspected  its  author  to  be  more  than 
a  clever  contriver  of  comic  plays.  Moliere  was  manly 
always,  and  never  servile;  but  when  he  was  in  the  pres- 
ence of  his  sovereign  he  knew  his  place  and  kept  it.  Not 
for  nothing  had  he  cultivated  his  insight  into  human 
nature;  and  we  may  be  sure  that  he  had  formed  a  pretty 


148  MOLIERE 

shrewd  guess  as  to  the  best  way  to  win  the  regard  of  the 
monarch  and  to  gain  the  royal  support  for  the  more 
daring  comedies  he  had  resolved  to  write. 

The  most  open  road  to  the  young  king's  good  will  was 
to  minister  to  his  pleasures;  and  it  was  along  this  road 
that  Moliere  advanced.  He  was  prompt  to  obey  the 
royal  wishes  and  even  to  anticipate  the  royal  desires. 
However  important  the  work  on  which  he  might  be  en- 
gaged, he  was  ever  ready  to  lay  it  aside  to  devise  the  kind 
of  play  that  the  sovereign  wanted,  comedy-ballet  or 
spectacle,  as  the  case  might  be.  Whatever  the  incon- 
venience to  himself,  the  insufficiency  of  time,  the  haste 
with  which  he  had  to  fulfil  his  task,  he  never  hesitated 
and  he  never  complained.  Whatever  the  monarch  had 
commanded  was  executed  at  once  by  Moliere  as  best  he 
could.  Swift  obedience  was  a  quality  Louis  XIV  could 
well  appreciate — as  he  could  also  the  inventive  fertility 
that  Moliere  revealed  in  the  succession  of  plays  written 
to  order.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  sovereign  was  willing 
to  do  what  he  could  for  a  servant  of  his  pleasures  who  met 
his  wishes  at  once.  To  say  this,  is  not  to  say  Louis  XIV 
overlooked  the  difference  of  rank  any  more  than  Moliere 
forgot  it. 

There  is  a  pretty  anecdote  setting  forth  the  king's  dis- 
covery that  Moliere  was  once  breakfastless  because  his 
fellow  valets  de  chambre  refused  to  eat  with  an  actor,  and 
narrating  the  monarch's  magnanimity  in  thereupon  in- 
viting the  dramatist  to  join  him  in  his  own  royal  meal. 
It  is  a  picturesque  legend  which  has  been  illustrated  in 
paintings  by  Ingres  and  by  Gerome.  But  it  is  quite 
impossible  to  believe,  without  surrendering  all  we  know 
about  the  inevitable  etiquet  and  the  invincible  ceremonial 
of  the  court,  and  without  denying  the  haughty  arrogance 


MOLIERE  AND  LOUIS  XIV  149 

of  the  sovereign,  who  was  served  alone,  and  who  did  not 
allow  even  the  princes  of  the  blood  to  sit  at  meat  with  him. 
It  could  not  have  happened;  but  if  it  had  happened,  the 
report  of  an  event  so  monstrous  would  have  reverberated 
through  all  the  abundant  letters  and  journals  of  the  time. 
As  the  case  stands,  the  simple  story  first  emerged  just  a 
century  and  a  half  after  Moliere's  death;  and  it  appeared 
then  only  in  a  memoir  of  slight  historic  validity,  wherein 
it  is  credited  to  the  doubtful  recollection  of  an  unnamed 
physician. 

There  are  two  other  anecdotes,  of  which  one  at  least 
is  more  solidly  authenticated,  and  which  reveal  more 
clearly  the  sovereign's  opinion  of  the  dramatist.  Grima- 
rest,  Moliere's  second  biographer — to  whom  we  are  more 
indebted  than  many  later  scholars  have  been  willing  to 
admit,  and  who  displayed  a  desire  to  collect  all  the  informa- 
tion accessible — Grimarest,  writing  in  1706,  declared  that 
"within  the  year  the  king  had  occasion  to  say  that  there 
were  two  men  he  could  never  replace,  Moliere  and  Lulli." 
Now  Lulli  was  a  wily  Florentine,  who  composed  the  music 
for  the  court-ballets,  and  who  also  shone  as  a  buffoon, 
evoking  spontaneous  laughter  by  his  antics.  Grimarest 
would  not  have  dared  to  publish  this  in  the  lifetime  of 
Louis  XIV  if  he  had  not  believed  it  to  be  true.  And  it 
sounds  highly  probable,  for  it  confirms  the  belief  that 
Louis  XIV  saw  in  Moliere,  not  so  much  the  supreme 
comic  dramatist,  as  the  deviser  of  court-ballets,  the  adroit 
minister  to  the  royal  pleasures. 

The  other  anecdote  is  to  be  found  in  the  life  of  Racine, 
written  by  his  son.  The  assertion  is  there  made  that 
Louis  XIV  once  asked  Boileau  who  was  the  rarest  of  the 
great  writers  that  had  given  glory  to  France  during  his 
reign,  and  that  Boileau  at  once  named  Moliere.  To 


i5o  MOLIERE 

which  the  king  replied,  "I  should  not  have  thought  it," 
adding  with  the  gracious  condescension  he  seems  often  to 
have  shown  to  Boileau,  "but  you  know  more  about  these 
things  than  I  do."  Probably,  it  had  never  before  struck 
him  that  Moliere  was  either  a  great  writer  or  a  rare  genius, 
since  he  had  always  regarded  from  a  very  different  point 
of  view  the  dramatist  who  was  also  an  actor. 


CHAPTER  IX 
'TARTUFFE' 

I 

THE  first  three  acts  of  'Tartuffe/  originally  acted  in 
1664  as  one  of  the  *  Pleasures  of  the  Enchanted  Island/ 
fell  under  the  royal  interdict  at  once;  and  not  until  1669 
did  the  king  finally  authorize  the  continuous  performance 
of  the  complete  play.  In  these  five  years  Moliere  was 
incessantly  seeking  permission  for  the  production  of  his 
masterpiece  before  the  public  of  Paris.  He  brought  out 
half  a  score  of  other  plays  during  this  interval,  including 
at  least  two  of  his  most  important  comedies;  but  he  never 
relaxed  for  a  moment  his  effort  to  win  the  royal  sanction 
for  the  acting  of  'Tartuffe.' 

Although  only  three  acts  were  included  in  the  '  Pleasures 
of  the  Enchanted  Island/  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  this  performance  was  incomplete  because  Moliere 
did  not  know  how  to  end  his  play  or  even  that  he  had  not 
planned  it  to  the  fall  of  the  final  curtain.  Quite  possibly 
the  later  acts  may  not  have  been  versified  when  the  earlier 
acts  were  performed,  or  at  least  may  not  have  received 
the  author's  finishing  touches.  But  it  is  inconceivable 
that  he  had  not  clear  in  his  own  mind  every  detail  of  the 
comedy  complete  from  beginning  to  end.  The  construction 
of  a  play  is  like  the  construction  of  a  building;  and  the 
foundations  must  always  be  what  the  upper  stories  will 


152  MOLIERE 

necessitate.  A  plot  must  needs  be  coherent  and  logical; 
and  Moliere  never  took  greater  pains  with  his  planning 
than  he  did  in  'Tartuffe.'  All  dramaturgic  experts  are 
agreed  in  praise  of  its  straightforward  movement  and  of 
its  masterly  unity.  The  three  acts  originally  produced 
before  the  king  imply  the  two  later  acts,  since  the  end 
of  the  comedy  is  the  necessary  consequence  of  its  beginning. 
And  therefore  'Tartuffe,'  although  often  considered  as 
a  later  play  than  'Don  Juan'  and  the  'Misanthrope,' 
demands  consideration  before  them.  Indeed,  it  is  only 
by  dealing  with  it  as  representative  of  Moliere's  develop- 
ment in  1664  that  it  can  be  rightly  appreciated. 

When  considered  in  its  proper  chronological  order, 
'Tartuffe'  is  seen  to  reveal  an  extraordinary  advance  in 
Moliere's  conception  of  comedy.  It  has  a  largeness  of 
theme  and  a  boldness  of  social  satire  which  nothing  in  his 
preceding  plays  had  led  us  to  suspect  from  him.  In  the 
'Ecole  des  Maris'  and  still  more  obviously  in  the  'Ecole 
des  Femmes'  he  had  posed  a  problem  and  he  had  sought 
to  deal  sincerely  with  life  as  he  saw  it.  But  in  both  plays 
he  had  depended  for  interest  on  intrigue  as  much  as  on 
character;  and  in  neither  of  these  pieces,  ingenious  as 
they  were,  was  the  intrigue  without  an  element  of  mechani- 
cal artificiality.  But  in  'Tartuffe'  the  adroitly  articulated 
story  does  not  exist  for  its  own  sake,  since  the  interest  is 
centered  in  the  characters,  and  in  what  they  are  rather 
than  in  what  they  do.  The  plot  is  what  it  is,  solely  be- 
cause the  characters  are  what  they  are. 

In  his  earliest  pieces  Moliere  had  revealed  little  more 
than  his  cleverness,  his  dramaturgic  dexterity,  his  abun- 
dant sense  of  fun,  his  overflowing  spirits.  It  is  true  that 
in  the  Trecieuses  Ridicules/  in  the  'Ecole  des  Maris,' 
and  in  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  he  had  also  a  thesis 


'TARTUFFE'  153 

which  served  to  stiffen  and  to  enrich  his  plot.  Yet  none 
of  these  comedies  contained  anything  which  really  prefig- 
ured the  sudden  development  displayed  in  'Tartuffe.'  In 
this  play,  as  in  the  later  'Misanthrope/  Moliere  enlarges 
the  boundaries  of  comedy  and  raises  it  to  a  more  exalted 
level.  He  gives  us  comic  plays  which  are  more  than  mere 
comic  plays.  They  arouse  laughter,  no  doubt,  the  thought- 
ful laughter  that  deep  comedy  ought  to  evoke;  but  they 
make  us  think  even  more  than  they  make  us  laugh.  They 
are  not  brisk  and  bustling  like  his  first  pieces;  they  are 
less  gay,  less  joyous;  they  are  serious  and  .they  are  charged 
with  meaning.  It  is  on  these  grave  and  almost  somber 
comedies,  wherein  Moliere,  by  main  strength,  imposed 
a  comic  aspect  upon  themes  in  themselves  far  from  comic,  • 
that  his  reputation  is  now  solidly  founded.  It  is  in  these 
plays  that  he  most  completely  discloses  the  richness  of 
his  endowment  as  a  comic  dramatist.  It  is  by  them  that 
he  stands  forth  a  successor  and  a  rival  to  Pascal,  whose 
'  Provincial  Letters/  published  less  than  ten  years  earlier, 
are  the  model  of  epistolary  comedy,  and  who  may  have 
pointed  out  to  Moliere  the  path  that  led  upward  to  the 
full  freedom  of  social  satire. 


II 

Although  'Tartuffe'  may  seem  serious  to  us  nowa- 
days, it  was  comic  enough  to  Moliere' s  contemporaries; 
and  the  clever  playwright  did  not  violently  break  with  his 
past,  however  swift  his  advance.  He  gave  the  playgoers 
of  Paris  the  abundant  laughter  he  had  led  them  to  expect 
from  him,  even  if  he  also  gave  them  something  more. 
Most  of  the  characters  in  'Tartuffe'  are  vigorously  drawn 
in  high  colors,  certain  to  meet  the  desire  of  the  public 


154  MOLIERE 

for  broad  comedy.  Moliere's  own  part,  Orgon,  is  one  of 
the  most  amusing  he  ever  put  on  the  stage;  and  the  char- 
acters of  Madame  Pernelle,  his  mother,  and  of  Dorine, 
his  wife's  companion,  are  both  of  them  exuberantly  comic 
in  conception  and  in  execution.  Even  Tartuffe  himself, 
although  sinister  at  heart,  is  amusing  on  the  surface;  the 
spectators  begin  by  laughing  at  him;  and  the  character 
was  entrusted  to  Du  Croisy,  an  actor  of  sustained  comic 
force.  The  play,  so  far  as  its  earlier  acts  are  concerned, 
is  almost  as  full  of  fun  as  any  of  Moliere's  preceding 
pieces;  but  this  fun  is  not  now  the  result  of  reliance  on 
the  methods  of  the  comedy-of-masks.  'Tartuffe'  does 
not  contain  any  of  the  fixed  types  of  the  Italians,  nor  is 
its  scene  laid  in  the  convenient  public  square. 

The  atmosphere  of  this  larger  comedy  is  French;  the 
scene  is  the  interior  of  a  French  household;  and  nearly  all 
the  characters  belong  to  a  single  French  family.  It  is 
true  that  the  members  of  this  family — excepting  only 
Madame  Pernelle — bear  the  conventional  stage-names 
customary  in  comedy  in  those  days;  yet  impersonal  as 
their  names  may  be,  they  have  each  of  them  an  indispu- 
table personality.  This  and  their  family  relationship  gives 
to  the  comedy  an  intimacy,  a  suggested  reality,  a  solidity 
of  texture  not  discoverable  in  any  earlier  play.  Pleasant 
folks  are  those  who  make  up  the  household  qf  Orgon; 
and  they  were  a  happy  family  before  the  arrival  of  Tar- 
tuffe. 

Orgon  is  a  worthy  burgher,  who  had  behaved  well  during 
the  Fronde;  he  is  well-to-do  and  he  lives  with  comfort, 
if  not  with  luxury.  He  has  a  rather  hot-headed  son, 
Damis,  and  a  more  docile  daughter,  Mariane,  whom  he 
has  affianced  to  Valere  (played  by  La  Grange).  Although 
well  on  in  years,  Orgon  has  taken  a  second  wife,  Elmire 


'TARTUFFE'  155 

(a  charming  character  written  by  Moliere  for  his  own 
wife).  Elmire  is  young  and  pretty;  she  is  fond  of  dress 
and  fond  of  society;  she  is  placid  in  temperament  and 
kindly  in  disposition,  being  on  the  best  of  terms  with  her 
two  step-children,  and  bearing  with  tolerant  equanimity 
the  taunts  and  reflections  of  Orgon's  old  mother,  Madame 
Pernelle,  who  must  have  been  a  little  hard  to  get  on  with. 
Elmire's  brother,  Cleante,  is  like  her;  he  has  the  same 
placidity  and  the  same  common  sense. 

The  household  is  completed  by  the  outspoken  and 
plain-spoken  Dorine  (played  by  Madeleine  Bejart),  a 
companion,  not  a  menial,  who  has  evidently  served  the 
family  for  years,  and  whose  position  is  so  secure  that  she 
never  hesitates  to  give  her  opinion  on  all  subjects  even 
before  it  is  asked.  The  type  was  one  that  Moliere  was 
to  employ  more  than  once  in  later  plays;  it  was  based  on 
observation  of  the  conditions  of  life  in  the  burgher  class 
in  Paris.  Dorine  lightens  up  all  the  scenes  in  which  she 
takes  part,  just  as  Mascarille  had  enlivened  all  the  episodes 
in  which  he  appeared.  Dorine,  however,  is  veracious, 
while  Mascarille,  brilliant  as  he  was,  can  be  praised  only 
as  a  later  variation  of  a  traditional  stage-type,  going  back 
through  Italian  to  Latin  comedy  and  even  to  Greek.  In 
general,  the  valets  of  Moliere  are  figures  of  fantasy,  in- 
herited from  his  predecessors  in  playmaking,  whereas  his 
soubrettes  are  nearly  always  truthfully  and  even  realis- 
tically copied  from  life. 

Into  this  burgher  family,  which  must  have  resembled 
a  hundred  others  in  Paris  under  Louis  XIV,  an  evil 
spirit  has  entered  in  the  person  of  Tartiiffe,  the  self- 
seeking  adventurer,  hiding  his  greed  behind  the  mask  of 
piety.  Orgon,  hitherto  a  sensible  man,  has  experienced 
a  change  of  heart;  and  religious  fervor  has  made  him 


156  MOLIERE 

selfish  and  foolish.  Having  met  the  seemingly  devout 
Tartuffe  in  church,  he  has  taken  the  hypocrite  into  his 
home  as  his  spiritual  director.  When  the  play  opens, 
Orgon  is  seen  to  have  fallen  absolutely  under  the  sway  of 
Tartuffe,  and  so  has  his  opinionated  old  mother,  Madame 
Pernelle.  In  vain  do  the  rest  of  the  family  protest  against 
the  presence  and  the  power  of  this  outsider.  So  infatuated 
is  Orgon  that  he  makes-a  deed  of  gift  to  Tartuffe;  and 
he  even  plans  to  bestow  his-daughter  in  marriage  to  the 
adventurer,  cruelly  breaking  off  Mariane's  engagement 
to  Valere.  Tartuffe  had  given  no  thought  to  Osgon's 
insignificant  daughter;  it  was  on  Orgon's  charming  young 
wife  that  he  had  cast  longing  eyes.  And  to  save  her 
step-children,  the  calm  and  kindly  Elmire  consents  to 
lure  Tartuffe  into  an  avowal  which  her  jiusband  in  hiding 
may  overhear.  When  this  scheme  is  successful,  when 
Tartuffe  has  betrayed  his  evil  designs  and  when  Orgon 
has  ordered  him  out  of  the  house,  the  impostor  throws 
off  the  mask  and  with  brazen  impudence  claims  the  house 
under  the  deed  of  gift.  Tartuffe,  to  whom  Orgon  had 
also  confided  a  compromising  secret,  is  even  foolhardy 
enough  to  denounce  his  benefactor  to  the  king;  and 
Orgon  would  be  ruined,  if  Louis  XIV  himself  did  not  in- 
tervene (almost  like  the  god  from  the  machine  in  a  Greek 
drama).  The  messenger  of  the  monarch  declares  the 
royal  will,  restores  the  house  to  Orgon  and  hales  the  villain 
to  prison. 

Ill 

This  unexpected  intervention  of  the  sovereign  has  been 
severely  criticised;  and  the  charge  has  been  made  that 
Moliere  is  often  careless  in  the  winding  up  of  his  plays. 
Taine  declared  that  "the  art  of  playmaking  is  as  capabk 


'TARTUFFE'  157 

of  development  as  the  art  of  clockmaking,"  and  that  the 
hack-playwright  of  to-day  sees  that  "the  catastrophe  of 
half  of  Moliere's  plays  is  ridiculous."  It  may  be  admit- 
ted at  once  that  Moliere  is  often  satisfied  to  end  a  play  in 
the  easiest  fashion.  Here  his  practice  is  in  accord  with 
Shakspere's;  and  there  is  a  certain  likeness  between  the 
end  of  'Tartuffe'  and  the  end  of  'Measure  for  Measure,' 
another  somber  comedy  in  which  lust  assumes  the  mask 
of  piety. 

Moliere  was  no  Ibsen  and  no  Dumas  fils  with  a  thesis, 
which  he  was  trying  to  prove  in  a  play,  and  which  im- 
posed a  logical  and  inevitable  conclusion.  He  was  a 
writer  of  liberal  comedy,  picturing  the  world  as  it  was 
mirrored  in  his  imagination,  with  no  desire  to  drive 
home  a  narrow  moral.  He  called  characters  into  being; 
he  set  them  in  contact  with  one  another;  he  let  them 
reveal  themselves  completely;  and  then  when  the  five 
acts  had  run  their  course,  he  sometimes  stopped  the 
action  short,  making  use  of  the  device  nearest  at  hand. 
Often  he  did  not  trouble  to  untie  the  knot,  he  cut  it 
abruptly. 

Yet  it  may  be  recorded  that  the  past-master  of  modern 
dramaturgy,  Scribe,  was  loud  in  his  approval  of  the  ending 
of  'Tartuffe.'  "First  of  all,  it  has  one  great  merit:  with- 
out it  we  should  not  have  had  the  piece,  for  Moliere  would 
probably  never  have  been  allowed  to  produce  it,  had  he 
not  made  the  king  an  actor  in  it.  Then,  what  a  startling 
picture  of  the  period  this  ending  gives  us!  Here  is  an 
honest  man  who  has  bravely  served  his  country,  and 
who,  when  deceived  by  the  most  open  and  odious  of 
machinations,  does  not  find  anywhere,  in  society  or  in  law, 
a  single  weapon  with  which  to  defend  himself.  To  save 
him  the  sovereign  himself  must  needs  intervene.  Where  &&. 


158  MOLIERE 

can  a  more  terrible  condemnation  of  the  reign  be  found  than 
in  this  immense  eulogy  of  the  king?"  This  is  shrewdly 
suggested,  and  yet  we  may  rest  assured  that  Moliere 
meant  no  reflection  on  Louis  XIV,  on  whose  vanity  he 
was  playing  to  win  permission  for  the  play.  Probably,  if 
it  had  not  been  for  the  proud  monarch's  desire  to  listen 
to  public  laudation  of  his  wisdom  and  his  justice,  the 
acting  of  Moliere's  masterpiece  might  never  have  been 
authorized.  A  message  from  Louis  XIV  was  also  the 
means  used  to  bring  to  a  finish  the  'Impromptu  de  Ver- 
sailles'; and  thus  we  find  Moliere  invoking  the  direct 
intervention  of  the  monarch  to  wind  up  two  very  dis- 
similar plays,  one  of  his  slightest  pieces  and  one  of  his 
solidest  comedies. 

Whatever  view  may  be  taken  of  the  propriety  of  this 
untying  of  the  knot,  the  conduct  of  the  plot  is  masterly. 
In  no  other  comedy  does  Moliere  more  abundantly  dis- 
play his  technical  skill,  his  sheer  craftsmanship.  The 
action  is  powerful  in  its  conception,  unswerving  in  its 
steady  movement,  and  simple  without  bareness.  The 
story  unrolls  itself  without  any  wilful  tricks,  with  no 
reliance  on  the  convenient  conventions  of  the  Italians; 
and  yet  with  a  clarity  which  even  the  Italians  never  sur- 
passed. Goethe  was  lavish  in  his  praise  of  Moliere's 
constructive  skill,  and  he  dwelt  especially  on  the  adroit- 
ness of  the  exposition:  "Only  think  what  an  introduction 
is  the  first  scene!  From  the  very  beginning  everything 
is  highly  significant  and  leads  us  to  expect  something  still 
more  important  which  is  to  come.  It  is  the  greatest  and 
best  thing  of  the  kind  which  exists."  And  from  the 
exposition  on  there  is  increasing  tensity  of  cumulative 
interest  up  to  the  sudden  turning  and  self-assertion  of 
Tartuffe  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  act — one  of  the  most 


'TARTUFFE'  159 

effective  scenes  ever  shown  in  a  theater,  startling  when 
it  comes,  and  yet  perfectly  prepared  for  and  immediately 
plausible. 

'TartufFe'  adequately  fulfils  Voltaire's  requirement 
that  "every  action,  every  scene  ought  to  serve  to  tie  or 
untie  the  plot,  every  speech  ought  to  be  a  preparation  or 
an  obstacle."  It  fulfils  also  Gautier's  stricter  require- 
ment that  the  skeleton  of  a  good  play  should  be  a  panto- 
mime. When  the  Comedie-Fran^aise  made  its  memora- 
ble visit  to  London  in  1879,  Sarcey  noted  how  easily 
and  how  eagerly  the  English  audiences  followed  the  per- 
formance of  this  play,  with  its  single  plot,  all  in  action 
and  with  no ""  digressions  which  needed  long-winded  ex- 
planations. And  the  acute  critic  then  suggested  that 
'TartufFe.'  was  perhaps  the  only  one  of  the  French 
classics  which  spectators,  ignorant  of  the  language,  could 
watch  with  unfailing  interest.  Here  'TartufFe'  is  like 
'Hamlet' — in  that  its  story  is  so  clear  that  if  the  play 
were  acted  in  a  deaf  and  dumb  asylum  the  inmates  would 
be  able  to  follow  it  with  appreciation.  Like  'Hamlet,' 
again,  it  is,  in  the  stage  phrase,  "actor-proof," — that  is  to 
say,  it  retains  its  power  of  holding  the  attention  of  the 
spectators  even  when  the  performance  is  barely  adequate; 
and  yet  it  will  always  repay  the  finest  acting.  Moliere's 
masterpiece,  like  Shakspere's,  again,  is  a  model  of  play- 
making  skill,  and  therefore  it  moves  every  audience 
before  which  it  is  presented,  whatever  the  merit  of  the 
actual  performance. 

The  foreigner  can  follow  the  acting  of  'TartufFe'  with- 
out difficulty,  partly  because  of  the  sharp  contrasts  of 
the  boldly  projected  characters,  and  partly  because  of  the 
swift  simplicity  of  the  story  in  which  these  characters  are 
involved.  The  plot  is  not  far-fetched  or  extraneous;  it 


160  MOLIERE 

is  the  direct  result  of  the  visible  contact  of  character  with 
character.  Orgon  and  the  several  members  of  his  family 
being  what  they  are,  then  the  obtrusion  into  the  circle  of 
Tartuffe,  he  being  what  he  is,  is  certain  to  bring  about 
the  several  situations  that  Moliere  has  set  on  the  stage. 
Yet  clear  as  the  story  is,  it  is  strong  and  tense;  indeed, 
it  is  so  moving  that  at  the  end  the  comedy  almost  stiffens 
into  tragedy.  And  the  source  of  this  strength  is  in  the 
subject  of  the  play,  in  the  central  figure  of  the  religious 
hypocrite,  in  our  common  knowledge  that  nothing  is  more 
disintegrating  to  the  family,  nothing  is  more  dangerous 
to  society,  than  the  impostor  who  hides  evil  designs 
beneath  the  outer  garb  of  piety  and  devotion. 

Moliere  spent  his  utmost  skill  in  so  presenting  Tartuffe 
that  there  could  be  no  doubt  about  the  impostor's  true 
character,  even  though  the  evil  schemer  never  for  a 
minute  lays  aside  the  mask  or  speaks  in  other  than  the 
language  of  saintliness.  It  is  by  delaying  the  first  ap- 
pearance of  the  adventurer  until  the  third  act,  and  by 
making  him  the  topic  of  every  earlier  conversation  that 
the  dramatist  artfully  arouses  in  the  mind  of  the  spectators 
the  unerring  suspicion  that  the  still  unseen  Tartuffe  must 
be  a  hypocrite.  Having  created  this  conviction,  Moliere 
leads  the  audience  to  see  through  the  impostor,  although 
he  does  not  permit  Tartuffe  to  have  a  single  aside,  such 
as  Shakspere  allotted  abundantly  to  lago,  whereby  that 
villain  might  unveil  his  black  soul.  Tartuffe  has  never 
a  monologue  to  make  clear  his  secret  thoughts;  but  his 
tortuous  nature  is  as  visible  to  the  spectators  in  the  thea- 
ter as  lago's,  which  Shakspere  has  disclosed  with  a  less 
delicate  art.  Even  when  Tartuffe  is  baffled  at  the  end 
and  borne  away  to  prison,  he  has  no  exit-speech,  in  which 
to  unpack  his  heart.  Indeed,  he  never  speaks  out;  he  is 


'TARTUFFE'  161 

ever  assiduously  playing  his  part;  and  yet  we  have  no 
difficulty  in  discerning  the  evil  hidden  beneath  the  veneer 
of  piety.  With  such  certain  strokes  has  Moliere  pre- 
pared for  his  first  appearance  that  the  spectators  cannot 
help  seeing  his  foul  self  behind  his  fair  words* 


IV 

Many  of  Moliere' s  commentators  have  fatigued  them- 
selves and  their  readers  in  an  idle  effort  to  designate  some 
one  of  his  contemporaries  as  the  possible  original  of 
Tartuffe,  just  as  they  have  sought  vainly  to  discover  the 
original  of  Alceste  in  the  'Misanthrope.'  To  assume 
that  a  really  vital  character  in  a  play  or  in  a  novel  can 
have  been  slavishly  copied  from  any  existing  human 
being,  is  to  misunderstand  the  method  of  the  creators. 
Moliere  was  not  a  photographer  taking  likenesses;  and 
no  one  man  sat  to  him  for  the  portrait  of  the  hypocrite 
or  of  the  misanthrope.  In  Tartuffe  the  dramatist  is  not 
drawing  an  indictment  against  any  individual;  he  is 
bringing  in  a  true  bill  against  the  body  to  which  the  im- 
postor belonged.  Into  the  mold  he  had  conceived  in  his 
imagination,  Moliere  cast  various  metals,  derived  from 
all  sorts  of  sources.  He  had  a  dozen  or  a  score  of  models 
for  Tartuffe;  and  he  may  have  availed  himself  of  stray 
hints  from  many  a  living  man,  as  he  did  also  from  many 
of  hfs  literary  predecessors,  more  particularly  from  Reg- 
nier  and  Scarron. 

If  Tartuffe  is  to  be  taken  merely  as  the  reproduction 
of  some  real  person,  readily  recognizable  by  his  contem- 
poraries, then  the  play  must  lose  much  of  its  largeness; 
and  it  could  scarcely  escape  the  pettiness  of  mere  per- 
sonality. Moreover,  it  would  be  far  less  satisfactory  as  a 


162  MOLIERE 

work  of  art.  In  this  comedy  Moliere  first  discloses  him- 
self as  really  an  artist  in  the  full  meaning  of  the  word. 
In  all  the  preceding  plays  it  is  easy  enough  to  pick  flaws; 
but  'Tartuffe'  at  last  withstands  criticism.  When  all 
is  said,  it  is  a  model  of  high  comedy,  of  the  humorous 
play  of  contemporary  manners,  the  action  of  which  is 
caused  by  the  conflict  of  character  with  character.  This 
model  Moliere  had  to  find  for  himself,  since  he  would 
have  sought  it  in  vain  in  any  earlier  dramatist,  whether 
French  or  Spanish,  Latin  or  Greek.  Of  course,  it  is  dimly 
possible  that  Menander  may  have  anticipated  Moliere  in 
the  composition  of  true  and  lofty  comedy,  dealing  vera- 
ciously  with  actual  life  and  charged  with  social  satire; 
but  even  if  this  had  chanced  to  be,  it  could  not  profit 
the  French  comic  dramatist,  since  no  single  complete 
work  of  the  Greek  comic  playwright  had  yet  been  replev- 
ined  from  oblivion. 

Even  the  supersubtle  theorists  of  dramatic  art  in  the 
Italian  Renascence  set  up  no  very  exalted  standard  for 
the  comic  drama.  Scaliger,  for  example,  distinguished 
only  three  elements  in  comedy — a  story  with  complica- 
tions, a  happy  ending,  and  a  familiar  style.  These  simple 
requirements  are  met  in  many  a  farce;  and  no  insistence 
on  them  would  have  aided  Moliere  to  attain  that  fine 
fusion  of  the  comedy-of-character  and  the  comedy-of- 
manners  which  we  discover  for  the  first  time  in  'Tartuffe/ 
and  which  Moliere  was  to  achieve  again  in  the  'Mis- 
anthrope' and  in  the  'Femmes  Savantes.'  He  had  to 
devise  this  model  himself,  with  but  little  aid  from  his 
predecessors  in  playmaking;  and  he  transmitted  it  to  ali- 
bis successors.  That  high  comedy  of  this  elevated  type 
is  exceedingly  difficult  to  attain  is  proved  by  its  extreme 
rarity  in  the  history  of  the  theater;  and  there  is  signifi- 


'TARTUFFE'  163 

cance  in  the  fact  that  whenever  later  dramatists  have  most 
amply  succeeded  in  achieving  this  high  comedy,  it  is  when 
they  have  most  closely  clung  to  the  model  Moliere  set  in 
'TartufFe'  and  in  the  later  'Femmes  Savantes.'  The  ex- 
amples easiest  to  cite  are  perhaps  the  most  conclusive  — 
the  'School  for  Scandal'  and  the  'Manage  de  Figaro,' 
the  'Gendre  de  M.  Poirier'  and  the  'Monde  ou  Ton 
s'ennuie.' 


The  third  of  Scaliger's  requirements  for  comedy  is  "a 
familiar  style";  and  here  again  Moliere  is  a  master. 
Purists  and  pedants  have  found  fault  with  Moliere's 
use  of  language  as  they  have  with  Shakspere's.  To  the 
eye  of  the  modern  reader  there  may  be  trailing  phrases 
here  and  there  in  Moliere's  lines,  as  well  as  constructions 
unauthorized  by  strict  usage.  But  his  dialogue  was  not 
written  for  the  eye  of  the  modern  reader;  it  was  com- 
posed for  the  ear  of  the  contemporary  audience.  It  has 
the  rhythm  of  the  spoken  word,  and  not  the  balance  of 
the  sentence  intended  to  be  read.  His  is  an  oral  style, 
as  the  style  of  every  dramatist  must  be;  and  no  oral 
style  was  ever  better  fitted  for  its  purpose.  It  lends  itself 
to  delivery  by  the  voice;  it  falls  trippingly  from  the 
tongue;  it  is  varied  in  its  cadences  and  in  its  color.  Boi- 
leau  wondered  at  the  ease  of  Moliere's  riming;  and  a 
later  French  poet-critic  has  praised  the  art  with  which 
Moliere  adjusted  his  manner  to  his  matter,  pointing  out 
that  the  rimes  are  brilliant  and  amusing  in  themselves 
v  in  the  early  artificial  pieces,  in  the  'Etourdi,'  for  example  — 
which  may  account  for  Victor  Hugo's  preference  for  this 
play  —  whereas  in  the  later  and  more  serious  comedies, 
'TartufFe'  and  the  'Misanthrope,'  the  rimes  are  unob- 
trusive, modestly  refraining  from  attracting  attention  to 
themselves. 


1 64  MOLIERE 

Full  and  rich  and  flexible  as  Moliere's  verse  is,  his 
prose  is  even  better  suited  to  its  purpose — or  at  least 
so  it  seems  to  those  of  us  whose  ears  are  accustomed  to 
the  strong  beats  of  Teutonic  poetry,  and  who  fail  to  find 
in  the  rimed  alexandrine  a  wholly  satisfactory  meter  for 
dramatic  dialogue.  Balzac  and  d'Andilly,  in  the  genera- 
tion before  Moliere,  had  laid  the  foundation  of  modern 
French  prose;  they  had  done  a  great  deal  to  give  the 
language  its  clarity  and  its  precision.  The  precieuses 
also  had  aided  in  the  effort  to  make  French  sharper  and 
more  direct.  Much  had  been  accomplished  in  season 
for  Moliere  to  profit  by  it;  but  he  preserved  his  liberty 
and  refused  to  be  bound  by  the  fleeting  fashions  of  the 
hour.  He  had  been  nourished  on  Rabelais  and  on 
Montaigne  and  he  relished  their  vivacity  and  their  vigor. 
Darmesteter  noted  that  the  language  of  Moliere — and 
also  that  of  La  Fontaine,  whose  genius  was  closely  akin 
to  his — is  far  less  Latin  than  that  of  most  of  the  great 
writers  of  the  seventeenth  century;  it  has  a  more  vernac- 
ular freedom  and  ease;  it  is  nearer  to  the  speech  of  the 
people;  and  thereby  it  is  more  truly  French. 

One  admission  must  needs  be  made.  However  truly 
French  his  vocabulary  may  be,  Moliere  could  not  get 
away  from  the  conventional  language  of  love-making, 
which  was  the  only  acceptable  vehicle  of  courtship  in 
the  Paris  theater  under  Louis  XIV.  In  his  love-scenes, 
whether  in  verse  or  in  prose,  he  has  perforce  to  use  the 
jargon  of  gallantry  and  to  let  his  lovers  talk  of  their 
flames,  their  chains,  their  fires  and  their  torments,  the 
same  frippery  of  outworn  phrases  which  annoys  us  also 
in  the  impassioned  speeches  of  Corneille's  heroes  and  of 
Racine's  heroines.  But  there  is  in  the  love-making  of 
the  young  wooers  in  Moliere' s  comedies  a  sincerity  of 


'TARTUFFE'  165 

emotion  which  we  can  feel  even  through  the  unreality 
of  the  traditional  figures  of  speech.  The  feeling  is 
genuine,  even  if  the  phrase  does  not  ring  true.  Behind 
and  beneath  the  shabby  and  threadbare  expressions,  we 
can  detect  the  throbbing  of  the  human  heart,  restrained 
by  decorum,  but  pulsing  with  ardor.  Even  if  the  riming 
couplets  of  the  lovers'  quarrel  of  Mariane  and  Valere 
may  sound  a  little  sophisticated,  the  sentiments  of  the 
young  couple  are  transparently  simple  and  truthful; 
and  even  if  the  seductive  appeal  of  Tartuffe  to  Elmire 
may  seem  a  little  stilted  in  its  sublimated  phraseology, 
there  echoes  all  through  it  the  strong  note  of  overmaster- 
ing desire. 


The  'TartufFe'  which  was  finally  permitted  to  be  per- 
formed in  1669  is  apparently  more  or  less  different  from 
the  original  'TartufFe/  of  which  three  acts  were  presented 
in  1664  as  part  of  the  'Pleasures  of  the  Enchanted  Island/ 
When  the  play  was  prohibited,  Moliere  did  not  hesitate 
to  make  concessions  which  might  render  it  easier  for  the 
king  to  permit  its  performance.  He  modified  his  comedy 
so  that  it  might  give  less  offense  to  those  who  objected 
to  it  in  good  faith.  As  the  result  of  these  successive , 
alterations,  there  seem  to  have  been  three  acting  versions 
of  the  play.  Of  these  only  the  last  survives,  and  yet 
we  can  guess  at  the  other  two  from  Moliere's  own  state- 
ments and  from  a  contemporary  report  describing  the 
single  performance  of  the  second  version. 

In  the  original  play  TartufFe  was  apparently  an  ecclesi- 
astic; at  least  he  wore  a  costume  which  suggested  a  con- 
nection with  the  church.  And  as  a  priest  could  not 
marry,  we  may  assume  that  Orgon's  project  of  giving 


166  MOLIERE 

his  daughter  to  Tartuffe  had  no  place  in  the  first  version. 
Probably  one  of  the  things  which  seemed  most  shocking 
when  the  three  acts  were  originally  represented  before 
the  court  was  this  use  of  ecclesiastical  costume  on  the 
stage,  an  abhorrent  novelty  in  France,  although  common 
enough  in  Italy,  where  the  church  was  taken  as  a  matter 
of  course.  Indeed,  more  than  one  of  the  Italian  comedies 
had  a  violence  of  satire  and  a  coarseness  of  attack,  going 
far  beyond  anything  in  Moliere's  play;  and  these  pieces 
had  been  often  acted  without  protest  in  Italy  and  even 
in  France.  This  is  what  gives  point  to  the  anecdote  with 
which  Moliere  concludes  his  preface.  A  few  days  after 
the  interdiction  of  ' Tartuffe '  the  Italian  comedians  per- 
formed before  the  court  a  piece  called  'Scaramouche 
Ermite';  and  the  king  said  to  Conde,  "I  should  like  to 
know  why  those  who  are  so  scandalized  by  Moliere's 
play  do  not  object  to  this  'Scaramouche'  ?"  To  which 
Conde  replied,  "The  reason  is  that  this  'Scaramouche' 
shows  up  religion  and  heaven,  as  to  which  these  gentlemen 
care  nothing;  whereas  Moliere's  comedy  shows  them  up — 
and  this  they  will  not  permit." 

Both  the  queen  and  the  queen-mother  were  devout 
Spaniards;  and  they  may  have  taken  offense  at  the 
broader  strokes  of  the  first  version  of  the  play,  of  which 
they  had  seen  only  three  acts.  Perhaps  the  royal  in- 
terdiction was  due  to  the  monarch's  desire  to  please  his 
mother  and  his  wife,  whenever  he  could  do  so  without 
sacrificing  his  own  private  pleasures.  But  he  himself 
found  no  fault  with  the  play;  and  after  a  Parisian  priest 
had  put  forth  a  violent  diatribe  against  the  author,  the 
king  listened  to  Moliere's  protest  and  censured  the  libel. 
When  a  papal  legate,  a  nephew  of  Alexander  VII,  came 
to  Fontainebleau,  Moliere  seized  the  occasion  and  read 


'TARTUFFE'  167 

'Tartuffe'  to  the  visiting  cardinal  and  to  the  dignitaries 
of  the  church  who  accompanied  the  envoy  of  the  pope; 
and  these  high  authorities  on  all  religious  matters  did  not 
disapprove  the  forbidden  drama. 

During  the  five  years  of  the  interdiction,  the  author 
read  the  play  repeatedly,  seeking  to  win  friends  for  it 
and  to  discount  the  hostility  of  those  who  thought  it  more 
dangerous  than  it  was.  In  giving  these  readings  Moliere 
was  employing  the  same  tactics  as  Rabelais  before  him, 
and  as  Beaumarchais  after  him.  Against  these  readings 
no  protest  was  raised  for  a  long  while;  and  the  sovereign 
even  tolerated  three  several  performances  of  the  entire 
play  given  for  Conde  at  one  or  another  of  the  family 
residences.  That  Louis  XIV,  while  maintaining  his 
interdiction  of  the  play  from  motives  of  policy,  did  not 
wish  to  discourage  or  disavow  Moliere,  is  made  evident 
by  his  taking  the  Palais-Royal  company  under  his  own 
patronage  in  1665.  He  asked  his  brother,  Monsieur, 
to  let  him  have  the  company;  he  allotted  it  an  annual 
pension  of  six  thousand  livres;  and  he  authorized  it  to 
entitle  itself  "the  company  of  the  king."  This  was  a 
gratifying  testimony  of  the  monarch's  favor,  even  though 
the  actors  of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne  continued  to  be  the 
"royal  company"  and  to  draw  a  pension  twice  as  large 
as  that  granted  to  Moliere  and  his  companions.  Perhaps 
it  may  be  well  to  note  here  that  on  the  accession  of  James 
I,  the  company  of  actors,  in  which  Shakspere  was  a 
sharer,  were  authorized  to  entitle  themselves  "the  king's 


servants." 


Three  years  after  the  first  performance  of  the  earlier 
acts  at  Versailles,  Moliere  seems  to  have  believed  that 
the  royal  interdiction  was  lifted;  and  in  August,  1667, 
he  brought  out  at  the  Palais-Royal  the  second  version 


168  MOLIERE 

of  the  play,  calling  it  the  'Imposteur'  and  changing  the 
name  of  Tartuffe  to  Panulphe.  The  next  morning  the 
play  was  forbidden  by  the  first  president  of  parliament, 
who  was  in  authority  in  Paris  while  the  sovereign  was 
absent  with  the  army  in  Flanders.  Within  a  week  the 
archbishop  of  Paris  also  forbade  the  performing;  the 
reading,  or  the  reciting  of  the  comedy,  publicly  or  pri- 
vately, under  penalty  of  excommunication.  Moliere  had 
already  closed  his  theater  and  had  sent  La  Grange  and 
another  actor  to  bear  a  petition  to  Louis  XIV.  The 
messengers  were  kindly  received  by  the  king,"  who  prom- 
ised to  take  the  matter  up  again  when  he  returned  from 
the  war. 

And  yet  Moliere  had  to  wait  more  than  a  year  longer 
before  the  sovereign  accorded  him  permission  for  the 
uninterrupted  performance  of  'Tartuffe'  in  the  theater. 
It  was  in  February,  1669,  that  the  third  version  of  the 
comedy,  the  only  one  known  to  us  now,  was  acted  at  the 
Palais-Royal  under  the  original  title;  and  at  last  Moliere 
had  the  reward  of  his  labor  and  of  his  long  years  of 
struggle  to  achieve  the  right  to  be  heard. 

VI 

In  the  ashes  of  a  dead  controversy  there  may  still  be 
a  little  heat  but  there  is  rarely  any  light.  Yet  a  proper 
consideration  of  Moliere's  comedy  requires  a  discussion 
of  the  motives  for  the  violent  hostility  it  aroused.  Nowa- 
days, we  are  all  agreed  that  hypocrisy,  contemptible  in 
itself,  may  be  a  menace  to  the  community;  and  we  are 
grateful  to  the  man  of  genius  who  sets  its  characteristics 
before  us  and  who  puts  us  on  our  guard.  Of  all  hy- 
pocrisies, religious  hypocrisy  is  the  most  despicable  and 


'TARTUFFE'  169 

the  most  dangerous.  It  is  religious  hypocrisy  that 
Moliere  assaulted,  and  he  asked  the  honestly  pious  to 
recognize  the  importance  of  the  warning  he  had  raised 
against  those  who  used  religion  only  as  a  cloak.  His  own 
good  faith  is  beyond  question;  and  yet  his  appeal  for 
support  met  with  no  response.  Sincerely  devout  men  of 
high  character,  the  first  president  of  parliament  and  the 
archbishop  of  Paris,  were  among  his  most  aggressive 
opponents.  Moliere's  portrayal  of  the  religious  hypocrite 
is  appallingly  veracious.  No  one  ought  to  have  been 
able  to  perceive  this  better  than  the  truly  devout;  and 
yet  they  did  not  come  to  his  aid,  standing  aloof  if  not 
hostile  during  the  five  years  of  his  long  struggle. 

Sainte-Beuve  pointed  out  that  Moliere  in  'TartufFe' 
attacked  religious  hypocrisy  before  its  full  outflowering 
in  the  later  years  of  Louis  XIV,  when  the  royal  sensualist 
had  become  a  narrow  bigot,  just  as  Le  Sage  in  'Turcaret' 
assailed  the  predatory  financiers  before  they  had  risen 
into  the  power  they  enjoyed  during  the  Regency.  Brune- 
tiere  insisted  that  there  were  few  religious  hypocrites 
when  Moliere  wrote,  and  that  therefore  his  play  was 
directed  against  the  genuinely  pious.  But  since  Sainte- 
Beuve  and  Brunetiere  expressed  these  opinions  we  have 
been  put  in  possession  of  further  facts;  we  have  been 
made  acquainted  with  the  so-called  "cabal  of  the  devout," 
which  had  been  gaining  power  in  the  forty  years  preceding 
the  composition  of  'Tartuffe.'  This  was  a  secret  organi- 
zation started  by  men  who  wished  to  further  the  cause 
of  religion,  as  they  understood  religion,  and  who  sought 
to  support  and  to  control  the  leaders  of  the  church.  At 
first  the  movement  may  have  been  more  or  less  tinctured 
with  Jansenism;  but  its  chiefs  had  in  time  prudently 
turned  against  this  sect  and  had  aided  the  ultimate 


170  MOLIERE 

triumphs  of  the  Jesuits.  These  chiefs  were  so  well 
assured  of  the  honesty  of  their  intentions  and  of  the 
worthiness  of  their  ends,  that  they  saw  no  reason  to  be 
scrupulous  as  to  the  means  they  employed  to  attain  their 
objects. 

Vague  and  disquieting  rumors  in  regard  to  this  mys- 
terious conspiracy  were  in  circulation  about  the  time  when 
Moliere  was  writing  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes/  The 
leaders  of  this  shadowy  league  made  no  public  defense; 
they  continued  their  labors  in  silence;  and  very  naturally 
they  came  to  be  suspected  of,  and  to  be  held  responsible 
for,  whatever  ecclesiastical  intriguing  and  for  whatever 
puritan  intolerance  might  become  manifest.  Very  likely 
Moliere  had  good  warrant  for  believing  that  something 
of  the  bitterness  and  violence  of  the  outcry  against  the 
'Ecole  des  Femmes'  was  due  to  the  cabal  of  the  devout. 
Men  who  were  bent  on  strengthening  the  authority 
of  the  church,  who  were  themselves  increasingly  austere, 
and  who  looked  with  reprobation  upon  the  fleshly  spec- 
tacles of  the  stage — men  holding  these  views  were  not 
likely  to  approve  of  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  or  of  its 
author.  And  Moliere,  in  his  turn,  was  not  likely  to  have 
high  regard  for  puritanism  in  any  of  its  manifestations. 

Even  in  the  severity  of  morals  of  the  sincerely  religious 
Moliere  would  be  inclined  to  see  exaggeration  if  not 
affectation;  and  to  him  all  affectation  was  offensive. 
Even  if  he  had  believed  in  the  honesty  of  purpose  of  those 
who  advocated  a  more  rigid  code  of  manners  and  of 
morals,  he  would  have  had  scant  sympathy  for  them. 
The  puritan  is  ever  the  foe  of  the  playwright;  and  the 
playwright  is  never  the  friend  of  the  puritan.  In  'Twelfth 
Night,'  and  in  'Measure  for  Measure/  Shakspere  did 
not  conceal  his  dislike  for  the  conversation  and  for  the 


'TARTUFFE'  171 

character  of  the  Puritans;  and  here  is  another  point  of 
contact  between  the  English  Mramatic  poet  and  the 
French.  Shrewd  observers  of  humanity,  both  of  them, 
spectators  of  its  manifold  weaknesses  and  pettinesses, 
recorders  of  its  invincible  selfishness,  Shakspere  and 
Moliere  could  not  help  distrusting  all  those  who  denounce 
worldliness  and  who  parade  otherworldliness.  Their 
healthy  suspicion  is  shared  by  many  a  plain  man,  and  it 
leads  him  to  look  with  doubt  on  the  Pharisees  who  pray 
at  street-corners  and  who  make  broad  their  phylacteries. 
Shakspere,  not  less  than  Moliere,  would  have  smiled  with 
silent  approval  at  La  Bruyere's  biting  assertion  that  "a 
man  who  parades  his  piety  is  a  man  who,  under  an 
atheist  king,  would  be  an  atheist." 

In  matters  of  religion  Moliere  was  not  militant;  rather 
was  he  tolerant.  He  conformed  to  the  custom  and 
accomplished  the  minimum  of  the  duties  prescribed  by 
the  church.  But  religion  did  not  interest  him  greatly; 
he  took  it  as  a  matter  of  course,  asking  no  questions 
and  letting  sleeping  doctrines  lie.  Indeed,  he  cared  too 
little  foi  these  things  to  feel  any  hostility  toward  them. 
He  had  few  beliefs  and  fewer  illusions.  His  tempera- 
ment was  not  exalted  or  mystic;  and  his  philosophy  was 
easy-going,  commonplace  and  rooted  in  common  sense. 
His  religion,  what  there  was  of  it,  was  of  this  world, 
and  not  of  the  next.  It  did  not  expect  too  much  of  man{ 
a  poor  creature  at  best;  and  it  believed  in  making  the 
most  of  life,  and  in  enjoying  its  good  things  in  moderation 
as  occasion  served.  It  rejected  and  resented  any  doctrine 
of  the  total  depravity  of  man,  for  it  held  that  humanity 
generally  meanjt  well,  however  completely  it  might  fail 
of  its  purpose.  It  believed  in  being  natural,'  as  Moliere 
himself  understood  nature;  and  it  was  afraid  to  lift  man 


1 72  MOLIERE 

aloft  into  ethereal  heights  where  the  moral  atmosphere 
might  be  too  rarefied  for  him  to  draw  a  long  breath. 

In  this  philosophy  of  Moliere's,  unformulated  as  it 
may  be,  and  yet  unmistakable  in  its  larger  outlines, 
there  was  little  detachment,  and  little  that  was  unsub- 
stantially spiritual.  It  loved  good,  no  doubt,  and  it  hated 
evil;  but  it  hated  especially  the  evil  which  sought  to 
disguise  itself  by  vaunting  its  own  goodness.  It  had 
as  its  basis  a  morality  which  was  only  humdrum  at  best; 
and  it  would  have  confessed  to  a  fair  share  of  epicure- 
anism. It  may  have  been  derived  in  some  measure  from 
Rabelais  and  from  Montaigne  also,  skeptics  both  of  them, 
who  also  conformed  to  the  usages  of  the  church.  To 
say  this  is  to  say  that  Moliere  was  not  profoundly  religious, 
like  his  ardent  contemporary,  Pascal,  and  also  that  he 
was  not  profoundly  irreligious  like  his  early  admiration, 
Lucretius.  Rather  was  he  like  the  gentle  and  kindly 
and  honest  Horace;  he  had  the  religion  of  a  man  of  the 
world,  a  religion  good  enough  to  guide  him  through  many 
complexities  of  conduct,  but  incapable  of  sustaining 
him  or  strengthening  him  or  even  solacing  him,  in  the 
darker  moments  of  discouragement  and  conflict,  those 
solemn  hours  of  which  Moliere  experienced  his  full  share. 
At  the  foundation  of  Moliere's  humor  there  was  melan- 
choly. Despite  his  exuberance  of  sheer  fun  he  was  at 
bottom  less  frolicsome  of  spirit  than  Montaigne.  He 
took  life  as  seriously  as  Pascal;  and  it  may  be  that  he  was 
even  sadder  at  heart. 

VII 

When  a  comic  dramatist  has  as  a  dominant  char- 
acteristic an  abomination  of  all  pretenders,  when  he  has 
experienced  the  opposition  of  the  puritans,  and  when  he 


'TARTUFFE'  173 

is  restrained  only  by  the  religion  of  a  man  of  the  world, 
he  may  easily  be  tempted  to  voice  anew  what  Emerson 
called  "the  oldest  gibe  of  literature,  the  ridicule  of  false 
religion."  And  he  is  likely  to  overlook  or  to  disregard 
the  warning  which  Milton  phrased  solemnly: 

For  neither  man  nor  angel  can  discern 

Hypocrisy — the  only  evil  that  walks 

Invisible,  except  to  God  alone, 

By  His  permissive  will,  through  Heaven  and  Earth. 

Here  indeed  is  the  insuperable  difficulty.  It  is  im- 
possible to  set  on  the  stage  a  religious  hypocrite  and  not 
lend  him  the  language  of  piety — absolutely  the  words 
which  he  would  use  if  he  were  sincerely  devout.  The 
outward  and  visible  signs  must  be  the  same,  whether  or 
not  the  avowedly  religious  character  is  speaking  in  good 
faith.  This  cannot  fail  to  strike  the  truly  pious,  none 
too  friendly  to  the  theater  at  best,  as  a  scandalous  des- 
ecration of  godly  phrases.  Furthermore,  it  suggests  to 
the  worldly,  willing  enough  to  clutch  at  the  suggestion, 
that  any  one  who  employs  this  sanctified  vocabulary 
may  be  a  hypocrite.  The  truly  pious  suspect  this  and 
resent  it;  and  with  not  a  little  show  of  justice  they  pro- 
test that  an  attempt  to  tear  the  mask  off  religious  hypoc- 
risy must  necessarily  take  on  the  occasional  aspect  of  an 
assault  on  religion  itself.  The  truly  pious  may  them- 
selves abhor  hypocrisy,  but  they  are  likely  also  to  object 
to  any  attempt  to  expose  it  in  a  play;  and  for  this  ob- 
jection there  is  abundant  justification.  Furthermore, 
they  cannot  help  feeling  that  a  comedy  like  'Tartuffe' 
must  have  been  written  by  an  uncongenial  spirit,  by  a 
man  wholly  out  of  sympathy  with  spiritual  sentiment. 
Sometimes  their  humility  before  God  is  accompanied  by 


174  MOLIERE 

a  jealous  pride  before  men,  which  inclines  them  to  see 
an  enemy  where  they  do  not  find  an  ally. 

That  the  truly  pious  are  not  altogether  at  fault  in  this 
attitude  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  opponents  of  the 
church  hold  the  same  view  of  the  full  meaning  of  'Tar- 
tuffe'  as  is  held  by  the  adherents  of  the  church.  Those 
who  are  aggressively  hostile  to  ecclesiasticism  in  any  form 
have  always  shown  themselves  ready  to  use  Moliere's 
attack  on  the  pretender  to  religion  as  though  it  were  an 
assault  on  religion  itself.  Whenever  there  has  been  a 
tension  in  the  relation  of  church  and  state,  in  Canada 
under  Frontenac,  or  in  England  in  the  days  of  the  non- 
jurors,  then  and  there  has  'Tartuffe'  been  made  to  play 
his  part.  That  this  partisan  use  of  the  comedy  goes 
far  beyond  Moliere's  intention  is  obvious,  since  he  put 
Cleante  into  the  play  especially  to  voice  his  own  respect 
for  those  whose  piety  is  as  sincere  as  it  is  unpretending. 
Still  there  is  little  doubt  also  that  Moliere  would  not  have 
been  greatly  annoyed  if  he  could  have  foreseen  what 
happened.  He  had  combined  in  'Tartuffe'  the  austerity 
of  the  Jansenist  and  the  casuistry  of  the  Jesuit;  and  he 
must  have  smiled  when  he  discovered  that  each  sect 
saw  in  his  play  the  picture  of  the  other  and  refused  to 
perceive  its  own  portrait.  But  he  could  not  have  been 
surprised  that  neither  party  really  relished  his  play. 


CHAPTER  X 
'DON  JUAN' 

I 

DURING  the  months  that  followed  the  production  of 
the  first  three  acts  of  'Tartuffe/  in  May,  1664,  Moliere 
struggled  with  public  disappointment  and  with  private 
sorrow.  One  of  his  intimate  friends  was  the  skeptical 
physician,  La  Mothe  le  Vayer;  and  when  that  octo- 
genarian lost  his  only  son,  in  the  early  fall,  Moliere  sent 
to  the  grieving  father  a  sonnet  of  lofty  consolation,  one 
of  the  very  few  of  his  minor  poems  which  has  come  down 
to  us.  He  accompanied  it  with  a  letter,  which  is  almost 
the  sole  surviving  specimen  of  his  prose  not  directly  con- 
nected with  his  work  as  a  dramatist. 

For  his  friend's  loss  he  could  find  words  of  cheer, 
little  foreseeing  that  the  same  bereavement  was  soon  to 
be  his  own.  His  first  child,  Louis,  born  in  January, 
1664,  two  years  after  Moliere  had  wedded  Armande 
Bejart,  died  in  November,  on  the  tenth,  the  day  after  the 
first  performance  of  the  'Princesse  d'Elide'  at  the  Palais- 
Royal.  The  funeral  took  place  the  next  day;  and  on 
the  morrow  the  stricken  parents  had  again  to  play  their 
parts  in  the  new  piece.  Moliere's  health  was  not  strong; 
and  he  seems  to  have  felt  at  last  the  burden  of  his  many 
duties  in  the  theater.  To  the  trustworthy  La  Grange 
he  now  relinquished  the  post  of  orator  of  the  company, 


176  MOLIERE 

which  he  had  held  since  the  distant  days  when  the  com- 
pany had  been  strollers  in  the  south  of  France. 

It  may  be  noted  that  Moliere's  sister  died  in  the  follow- 
ing April;  and  also  that  his  second  child,  Madeleine, 
the  only  one  who  was  to  survive  him,  was  born  in  the 
following  August.  It  is  pleasant  to  record  furtjher  that 
in  this  winter  of  public  contention  and  of  private  grief, 
Moliere  may  have  found  relief  in  the  agreeable  gather- 
ings at  Boileau's  which  gave  him  the  consoling  companion- 
ship of  Boileau  himself,  of  La  Fontaine  and  of  the  young 
Racine.  It  was  in  June,  1664,  that  he  brought  out 
Racine's  first  play,  the  'Thebaide/  to  be  followed  in 
December,  1665,  by  a  second,  the  'Alexandre/  which  its 
ambitious  and  ungrateful  author  was  surreptitiously  to 
take  over  to  a  rival  company.  Tradition  tells  us  that 
Shakspere  opened  the  stage-door  to  Ben  Jonson,  as  Mo- 
liere opened  it  to  Racine;  but  Ben  Jonson,  self-willed 
as  he  was,  did  not  turn  against  the  elder  author  who 
lent  him  a  helping  hand  in  his  eager  youth. 

II 

The  company  had  brought  back  to  Paris  a  few  of  the 
comic  and  tragic  plays  by  the  older  dramatists  in  which 
it  had  won  success  in  the  provinces,  and  it  gladly  wel- 
comed new  pieces  by  younger  writers;  yet  its  main 
dependence  was  ever  on  Moliere's  own  comedies.  This 
is  made  plain  by  La  Grange's  register  in  which  the  pro- 
gram of  every  performance  is  set  down.  When  the  com- 
pany went  to  one  or  another  of  the  royal  palaces  to  give 
a  series  of  performances  for  the  king  and  the  court, 
plays  by  any  other  dramatist  than  Moliere  were  very 
rarely  included  in  the  list.  He  was  the  stock-playwright 


'DON  JUAN'  177 

of  the  Palais-Royal,  as  Shakspere  had  been  the  stock- 
playwright  of  the  Globe.  As  author  no  less  than  as 
actor,  Moliere  was  the  mainstay  of  the  enterprise;  and 
his  comrades  kept  looking  to  him  to  keep  them  supplied 
with  new  plays  to  attract  the  Parisian  playgoers. 

It  was  a  severe  disappointment  to  him  that  'Tartuffe/ 
the  most  original  and  the  most  effective  comedy  he  had 
yet  written,  could  not  be  performed  in  Paris;  but  to  his 
associates,  as  well  as  to  him,  this  deprivation  was  also 
a  pecuniary  damage.  It  left  the  theater  without  any 
novelty  to  proffer;  and  the  company  had  to  do  the  best 
it  could  with  plays  of  which  the  public  might  be  begin- 
ning to  weary.  For  a  while,  Moliere  seems  to  have 
hoped  that  the  royal  interdict  on  'Tartuffe'  would  be 
raised;  and  it  was  not  until  early  in  the  next  year  that  he 
made  ready  a  new  play  to  take  the  place  of  the  forbidden 
comedy.  His  choice  of  a  subject  for  this  new  piece  re- 
veals his  desire  to  meet  the  wishes  of  his  comrades  and 
to  supply  the  theater  with  an  alluring  spectacle. 

The  legend  of  Don  Juan  had  been  set  on  the  stage  in 
Spain;  and  the  Italian  comedians  had  promptly  borrowed 
the  Spanish  play.  It  had  achieved  immediate  popularity 
wherever  it  was  performed,  partly  in  consequence  of  its 
picturesque  and  powerful  story,  and  partly  in  consequence 
of  its  spectacular  effects,  the  coming  to  life  of  a  marble 
statue,  and  the  descent  of  the  blasphemous  hero  into  the 
flames  of  hell.  The  original  Spanish  drama  may  have 
been  presented  in  Paris  by  one  or  another  of  the  Spanish 
companies  which  had  come  to  France  from  time  to  time. 
An  Italian  alteration  had  been  produced  by  the  company 
which  shared  the  Palais-Royal  with  Moliere  and  his 
comrades.  Two  different  French  adaptations  had  been 
performed  in  Paris,  one  of  them  at  the  Hotel  de  Bour- 


178  MOLIERE 

gogne.  Moliere  was  justified  in  believing  that  if  he 
should  prepare  a  version  in  his  turn,  it  would  be  assured 
in  advance  of  a  hearty  welcome  from  the  spectacle-loving 
playgoers. 

He  no  more  shrank  from  the  task  of  making  over  a 
popular  play  than  Shakspere  had  hesitated  to  handle 
anew  the  worn  material  of  'Henry  IV  and  'Henry  V.' 
We  may  doubt  whether  a  lyrical  legend,  evolved  by 
Spanish  mysticism  and  tricked  out  with  sensational 
trappings,  would  ever  have  tempted  Moliere  for  its  own 
sake;  it  was  too  foreign  to  his  temperament  to  have 
allured  him,  if  there  had  not  been  pressing  need  of  a  new 
play  to  serve  as  a  stop-gap  until  'Tartuffe'  might  be 
performed  again.  Chappuzeau,  the  contemporary  his- 
torian of  the  French  theater,  cited  Moliere  as  a  rapid 
writer,  who  "could  prepare  in  a  few  days  a  play  that  was 
greatly  followed";  and  Moliere  may  have  rapidly  made 
ready  the  easy  prose  of  his  new  version  of  the  old  story. 
Even  if  the  impulse  to  write  'Don  Juan'  was  external, 
he  did  not  shirk  the  labor  needed  to  make  the  play  as 
interesting  as  might  be;  and  he  seized  the  occasion  to 
carry  on  the  attack  on  hypocrisy  which  he  had  begun  in 
L. 'Tartuffe.' 

'Don  Juan'  was  first  acted  at  the  Palais-Royal  in 
February,  1665;  and  it  was  performed  fifteen  times  in 
the  following  five  weeks  before  the  theater  closed.  These 
performances  were  highly  profitable;  and  there  is  no  rea- 
son to  doubt  that  the  popularity  of  the  piece  would  have 
kept  it  in  the  repertory  for  several  seasons.  But  its 
career  was  cut  short  after  this  fifteenth  performance. 
It  had  aroused  a  bitterness  of  animosity  almost  equal  to 
that  evoked  by  'Tartuffe.'  The  malignant  assault  of  a 
bigoted  lawyer  on  'Don  Juan'  was  quite  as  offensive  as 


'DON  JUAN'  179 

that  made  on  'Tartuffe'  by  a  bigoted  priest.  To  this 
attack  friends  of  Moliere  retorted;  but  the  play  was  held 
to  be  dangerous  by  those  who  had  been  shocked  at  the 
boldness  of  'Tartuffe/  All  this  leads  to  the  conviction 
that  the  author  must  have  received  a  royal  hint  not  to 
bring  the  play  forward  when  the  theater  reopened;  and 
it  is  possible  that  this  withdrawal  of  'Don  Juan*  was 
made  a  condition  for  the  ultimate  approval  of  'Tartuffe/ 
It  is  noteworthy  that  Moliere,  who  was  unceasing  in 
his  demands  on  the  monarch  for  permission  to  perform 
the  comedy  which  lay  close  to  his  heart,  made  no  public 
protest  against  the  suppression  of  his  later  adaptation 
from  the  Italian-Spanish,  although  this  could  not  but 
cut  into  the  profits  of  the  theater.  Probably  he  was 
satisfied  that  the  king  had  made  amends  pecuniarily, 
when  the  company  was  taken  directly  under  the  royal 
patronage  with  a  comfortable  annual  subsidy.  And 
possibly  he  was  not  greatly  interested  in  'Don  Juan/ 
looking  down  on  it  as  merely  a  job  of  hack-work,  done 
under  pressure  of  necessity  to  please  his  fellow-actors. 
He  may  have  felt  that  this  version  of  a  Spanish  story, 
not  really  congenial  in  its  theme,  was  not  representative 
of  the  kind  of  work  he  was  anxious  to  produce.  Very 
likely  he  would  not  have  been  indignant  if  he  could  have 
foreseen  that  only  four  years  after  his  death,  the  younger 
Corneille  would  be  employed  to  turn  his  alert  and  vivid 
prose  into  tame  alexandrines  and  at  the  same  time  to 
make  the  play  harmless  by  smoothing  away  the  traces  of 
Moliere's  indignation  with  hypocrisy. 


1  86  MOLIERE 

III 

Although  Moliere  chose  to  call  'Don  Juan'  a  comedy, 
it  is  not  comic  in  its  theme,  and  the  laughter  it  may 
arouse  is  evoked  only  by  episodic  incidents  here  and 
there.  The  original  Spanish  play  was  a  high-flown, 
lyrical  melodrama,  full  of  religious  fervor.  The  Italian 
adaptations  had  retained  the  central  situations,  while 
warping  the  story  to  fit  the  traditions  of  the  comedy- 
they  had  attenuated  the  perfervid  romanticism 


ofjthe  original,  and  they  had  elaborated  the_  low-corn  ejy 
part  and  airihose  passageswhere  they  felt  at  liberty 
to  be^r^nny.  Moliere  followed^  one  or  another  of  these 
Italian  versions^  or  of  the  earlier  French  adaptations  of 
these  Italian  pieces;  and  he  may  not  have  been  familiar 
with  the  Spanish  original.  He  simplified  the  tangled 
sequence  of  events;  yet  he  could  not  but  be  subject  to  his 
source;  and  he  was  unable  to  give  to  the  story  the  logi- 
cal unity  of  'Tartuffe'  and  of  the  'Misanthrope/  The 
piece  remains  almost  as  loose-jointed  as  an  English 
chronicle-play,  'Richard  III,'  for  example  —  to  which, 
indeed,  it  has  more  than  a  superficial  likeness.  jt_  is  a 
string  of  detached  episodes,  exhibiting  successive  facets 
of  Don  Juan's  character  and  leading  up  to  the  banquet 
with  the^statue  and  to  the  hery  ingulfing  of  the  wicked  herpT^ 

The  construction  being  ratheF  fragmentary,  the  sole 
unity  is  in  the  development  of  the  character  of  the  hero; 
but  Molierewas  able  to  bring  the  SpanishjtajiaiL-&tQJX^ 
into  a  C£rtain^nformit)Twith  ibe  con  temporary  customs 
of  the  French  theater.  He  made  no  reference  to  the 
passage  of  time;  and  therefore  the  several  intrigues  of 
Don  Juan  may  be  supposed  to  have  taken  place  all  within 
the  limits  of  twenty-four  hours  or  a  little  longer.  He 


'DON  JUAN'  181 

changes  the  scenery  only  between  the  acts  and  he  leaves 
these  backgrounds  rather  indeterminate.  He  entrusted 
the  impersonation  of  Don  Juan  to  La  Grange;  and  him- 
self took  the  part  of  the  hero's  servant,  whom  he  called 
Sganarelle. 

The  opening  of  the  play  is  a  skilful  specimen  of  ex- 
position, an  adroit  preparation  for  all  that  was  to  come 
after.  To  one  of  the  minor  characters  Sganarelle  sets 
forth  what  manner  of  man  his  master  really  is,  declaring 
that  "a  great  lord  who  is  a  wicked  man,  is  a  terrible 
thing."  And  immediately  thereafter  Don  Juan,  with 
characteristic  cynicism,  sets  forth  his  own  theory  of  life, 
appalling  in  its  selfishness.  This  immoral  code  is  then 
shown  in  action,  when  Don  Juan  repulses  one  of  his 
victims,  Elvire2_whQ.m  hp  hag  gprhir^d  fjrjom^a^  convent, 


and  whom  he  now  casts  from  him  without  disguising  his 
impertinenT  disregard  for  her  feelingsv  In  the  second 
act  we  see  him  at  work,  cajoling  two  peasant  girls  and  in 
making  each  of  them  believe  that  she  is  his  choice,  even 
when  they  both  claim  him  at  once.  In  the  third  act  he 
rescues  one  of  Elvire's  brothers  from  an  attack  by  robbers; 
and  thenfinding  himself  in  front  of  the  tomb  of  the  Cony 
manderwhom  he  had  killed  a  few  months  earlier,  he 
orders  Sganarelle  to  invite  the  statue  of  the  dead  man  to 
jupper.  The  statue  bows  his  head  in  acceptance  of  the 
invitation. 

In  the  fourth  act  Don  Juan  humorously  pacifies  an 
insistent  creditor,  and  listens  impatiently  to  his  father,  who 
predicts  divine  vengeance  on  his  incessant  wickedness. 
Elvire,  who  has  now  made  her  peace  with  heaven,  appeals 
to  him  to  repent  while  there  is  yet  time.  Finally,  the 
^statue  of  the  Commander  comes_to_£ujpper,  and  then  in- 
jc  nrtcf  t^  sup  with  him  th^  n^rt  night7  And  in  the 


, 


i82  MOLIERE 

fifth  and  last  act,  Don  Juan  gives  another  proof  of  his 
impenitence  by  turning  hypocrite  and  by  pretending  to 
have  seen  the  error  of  his  ways.  He  even  pleads  his 
conversion  when  a  brother  of  Elvire  insists  on  his  marry- 
ing his  victim  or  giving  to  her  champion  the  satisfaction 
of  a  gentleman.  Then  a  ghost  appears  and  changes 
into  Time  with  its  scythe.  At  last  the  statue  of  the  Com- 
mander enters,  T^glL^ ] jgh tn i ng  JLa&kgg— an (\  ^  fa* m ing 

chasm  opens  and  Don  Juan  is  precipitated  to  hell.  Sgan- 
arelle  briefly  points  the  moral  and  the  play  is  over. 

IV 

From  this  outline  of  the  story  it  is  clear  that  'Don 
Juan'  cannot  be  considered  a  well-knit  play,  when  it  is 
tried  by  any  severe  standard  of  dramaturgy.  Its  action 
is  casual  and  inconsequent,  with  more  than  one  incident 
which  is  quite  unnecessary.  Having  undertaken  to  make 
over  a  play  of  proved  popularity,  Moliere  contented^ 
himself  with  adapting  or  transposing  the  Spanish-Italian 
stojy^  he^jidjiot  assimilate  it  and  make  it  his  own  ab- 
sobitfily.  Possibly  he  did  not  feel  free  to  modify  the  plot 
too  much,  and  possibly  again  his  heart  was  not  in  his 
work,  since  its  subject  matter  was  not  really  to  his  own 
liking.  It  :was_j^_jhpmp  romantic  and  fantastic;  and 
with  these  characteristics  Moliere  had  little  sympathy. 
His  ^wn  jglish  was  ever  for  the  concrete  realities  of  life. 
He  liked  to  deal  with  the  men  and  women  he  saw  around 
him  in  his  own  country  and  in  his  own  time.  His  own 
taste  would  never  have  led  him  to  make  a  play  having 
for  its  hero  a  remote  and  legendary  character. 

This  must  be  admitted  frankly,  and  'Don  Juan*  must 
be  considered  primarily  as  a  piece  of  hack-work  accom- 


'DON  JUAN'  183 

plished  to  meet  special  conditions  in  the  theater;  none 
the  less  the  play  demands  discussion,  if  not  as  one  of 
Moliere's  masterpieces,  at  least  as  a  striking  product  of 
his  genius.  Just  as  Shakspere  took  over  the  earlier 
'Hamlet/  preserving  its  plot  intact,  and  then  elevated 
it  by  purging  away  its  baser  horrors  and  by  filling  it  with 
his  own  ampler  poetry  and  philosophy  and  psychology, 
so  Moliere  took  over  'Don  Juan' — a  far  less  congenial 
subject  for  him  than  'Hamlet'  had  been  for  Shakspere, 
who  had  a  leaning  toward  the  supernatural — and  elevated 
it  by  a  transformation  of  Don  Juan  himself.  The  shallow 
jdiaracter  of  the  universal  lover,  mocking  heaven  and 
\  going  to  "Hell,  disappears,  to  bej-eplaced  by  the  terrifying 
portrait  of  a  great  lord  who  is  a  wicked  man.  It  is  in  the 
projection  of  this  sinister  personality  that  Moliere  put 
forth  his  full  strength;  and  it  is  because  of  his  portrayal 
of  the  steely  iniquity  of  Don  Juan,  because  Don  Juan 
himself  is  a  figure  of  incarnate  evil,  to  be  set  by  the  side 
of  lago,  that  this  play  ranks  itself  by  the  side  of  'Tar- 
tuffe.'  And  we  can  now  see  that  the  subject  which 
Moliere  chose  because  of  its  spectacular  element,  he  so 
handled  that  these  spectacular  elements  ceased  to  be 
significant  or  even  important. 

In  several  of  the  plays  written  between  the  first  appear- 
ance of  'Tartuffe'  before  the  king  and  its  final  produc- 
tion five  years  later  in  the  Palais-Royal,  one  can  perceive 
the  same  impulse  which  had  driven  Moliere  to  compose 
'TartufFe'  itself;  and  in  some  of  them  we  can  discover 
traces  of  his  disgust  at  the  interdiction  of  his  great  com- 
edy. Perhaps  he  might  never  have  written  'Don  Juan' 
if  'TartufFe'  had  not  been  prohibited;  and  probably  this 
prohibition  is  partly  responsible  for  the  deeper  traits  of 
Don  Juan  himself. 


i84  MOLIERE 


is  the  embodiment  of  primitive  sejomMn- 
nct,  selfish,  lawless,  and  corrupting  Advancing  civili- 
ation  has  found  it  needful  to  control  this  instinct^  and 
the  insatiable  seducer  has  come  under  the  ban  of  morals 
and  of  religion  which  certifies  morality.  And  therefore 
Don  Juan  is  moved  in  his  turn  to  scout  religion  and  to 
see  only  hypocrisy  in  any  manifestation  of  morality.  He 
has  shifting  caprices  and  perverted  desires;  but  his  in- 
grained  selfishness  keeps  him  cold  to  the  sufferings  of 
victims  —  perhaps  it  even  leads  him  to  find  a  voluptu- 
ous satisfaction  in  their  writhings.  His  amorous  egotism, 
joying  in  the  dexterity  of  his  devices,  makes  him  proud 
of  his  inconstancy,  as  an  evidence  of  his  superiority  over 
the  rest  of  mankind. 

It  is  this  type  of  essential  energy,  however  misguided 
and  misplaced,  that  Moliere  sets  on  the  stage  with  deep 
erstanding  of  its  possibilities.  The  dramatist  lends 
to  his  frightful  yet  fascinating  hero  the  finer  qualities 
which  belong  to  the  type;  and  his  Don  Juan  is  no  mere 
butterfly  wooer  of  maid,  wife  and  widow;  he  is  gay  and 
clever,  quick-witted  and  sharp-tongued.  Above  all  he  is 
brave;  this  much  at  least  must  be  counted  to  his  credit  — 
that  he  is  devoid  of  fear.  A  type  of  essential  energy 
could  not  be  a  coward;  and  Don  Juan  has  a  bravura 
bravery,  £Ie  displays  an  unconquerable  courage  in  the 
f*C£^  nf...A>atTi  ar^iT^fJTfijj^pRjftnrp  of  damnation.  He 
has  a  final  impenitence  in  full  view  of  eternity  which 
may  lend  to  him  for  the  moment  a  likeness  to  Milton's 
Satan. 

We  are  made  to  see  Don  Juan  not  only  as  he  appears 
before  us,  but  also  as  he  reveals  himself  to  the  servant 
who  has  witnessed  his  misdeeds  and  who  knows  his 
secrets.  Moliere  found  this  humble  companion  of  the 


'DON  JUAN'  185 

hero  in  his  Spanish-Italian  original,  wherein  he  was  no 
more  than  ^low-comedy  part,  a  mere  fun-maker,  like  a 
h u n dred  other  clowns?  expected_jo  get  his  laughs  at  all 

hay.arHsjn  order  tn  rpliVvp  the  snmhpr  rnmpWinn  nf  the 

main  story.  This  low-comedy  part  Moliere  transposed 
for  his  own  acting;  and  he  called  it  Sganarelle,  although 
the  character  differs  widely  from  any  Sganarelle  pre- 
sented in  the  earlier  plays  in  which  he  appears.  _He  is 
no  longer  the  obstinate  creature  whom  we  have  already 
laughed  gf  again  xnA  sgsLo  He  is  now  a  cowardly  j/' 
servant  endowed  with  penetrating  shrewdness.  He  has 
the  hard-headed  simplicity  of  Sancho  Panza;  and  it  is  he 
who  acts  as  chorus,  and  who  here  serves  as  the  mouth- 
piece of  the  author.  His  duty  it  is,  not  only  to  enliven 
the  action  by  his  blunders  and  by  his  jests  but  also  to 
comment  on  what  takes  place,  and  to  suggest  to  the 
f  spectators  the  repugnance  which  they  ought  to  feel  for 
the  eternally  charming  hero,  so  handsome  and  so  brave, 
so  cruel  and  so  callous.  It  is  Sganarelle  who  brings  out 
the  moral  again  and  again  in  the  course  of  the  play. 

'  V 

Rarely  has  the  morality  of  a  play  been  confided  to  a 
/ /character  to  whom  we  more  willingly  listen,  for  all  that 
*     he  is  timorous,  mendacious  and  servile.     He  is  the  em- 
bodiment of  French  common  sense,  as  Don  Juan  is  the 
incarnation   of  French   wickedness.     And   all   the   other 
characters  in  the  play  are  equally  swift  to  reveal  their 
birth  in  France,  even  though  they  take  part  in  a  Spanish 
story  with  its  scene  laid  in  Italy. 

Moliere  took  a  Spanish  legend,  rilled  with  characters 
fundamentally   Spanish,   and   he   made   it   French.     He 


i86  MOLIERE 

allowed  the  action  of  his  play  to  take  place  in  an  alleged 
Sicily,  but  the  persons  of  his  piece  are  French,  all  of  them, 
inherently  French.  Shakspere  had  also  laid  the  scene 
of  a  story  in  an  alleged  Sicily,  but  his  Beatrice  and  his 
Benedick  are  quite  as  English  as  his  Dogberry  and  Verges. 
Shakspere  and  Moliere,  both  of  them,  reproduced  char- 
acters they  knew  at  first  hand,  and  made  no  vain  effort 
after  local  color;  neither  of  them  fatigued  himself  in  an 
idle  endeavor  to  step  off  his  own  shadow.  Alien  as  the 
theme  of  '  Don  Juan '  might  be  to  his  sympathy,  Moliere 
modified  it  to  suit  his  own  intention;  and  then  peopled 
the  borrowed  legend  with  characters  like  those  he  had 
observed  himself  in  the  capital  and  in  the  provinces. 

He  puts  into  the  mouths  of  the  peasant  girls  and  of  the 
country  bumpkin  who  is  in  love  with  one  of  them,  a  pro- 
vincial dialect  such  as  he  had  picked  up  in  the  days  of 
his  strolling.  And  his  knowledge  of  the  peasant,  male 
and  female,  goes  far  deeper  than  mere  dialect,  for  he 
was  familiar  also  with  their  modes  of  thought,  with  their 
narrow-mindedness  and  their  obstinacy.  The  creditor 
whom  Don  Juan  wheedles  is  a  worthy  burgher  of  Paris, 
a  contemporary  of  Moliere's  father.  The  outraged 
Elvire  might  have  stalked  straight  out  of  one  of  Cor- 
neille's  lofty  tragedies,  and  so  might  her  fiery  and  eloquent 
brothers.  Don  Juan's  father  is  a  gentleman  of  the  old 
school,  austere  and  unbending,  a  survival  from  the  rule 
of  Louis  XIII,  such  as  Moliere  may  often  have  met  in  his 
father's  shop. 

And  Don  Juan  has  suffered  a  change  in  crossing  the 
Pyrenees  and  the  Alps.  Heisajvery_different  figure_iii 
Moliere's  play  from  the  rather  vnlgarjTem..vi]jajn  of  the 
turEidand  violent  Spamsh__piecet  Less  affected  and 
less  artificially  lyric,  he  has  become  more  truly  poetic. 


'DON  JUAN'  187 

Above  all,  he  has  gained  in  distinction;  he  is  now  a  gentle- 
man, in  externals  at  least,  in  breeding,  in  courage,  and  in 
overbearing  self-confidence.  Moliere  had  not  to  go  far 
afield  in  search  of  a  model.  There  were  a  host  of  young 
gallants  at  the  court  of  Louis  XIV,  who  might  have  sat 
for  the  portrait  —  well-born,  graceful  and  unscrupulous. 
The  comic  dramatist  was  no  respecter  of  persons,  no 
flatterer  of  rank.  He  might  be  the  servant  of  the  king, 
but  he  was  not  a  blind  admirer  of  the  king's  courtiers. 
In  play  after  play  he  had  made  fun  of  these  danglers  after 
the  person  of  the  monarch;  in  the  'Facheux'  he  had  etched 
a  gallery  of  grotesques,  and  now  he  held  up  to  scorn  where 
all  the  world  might  see,  burgher  as  well  as  courtier,  a 
figure  more  despicable  and  more  dangerous,  the  great 
lord  who  is  a  wicked  man.  Here  is  an  appalling  portrayal 
of  impious  selfishness  and  of  mocking  cynicism,  never 
more  splendidly  set  forth  than  in  the  episodic  scene  in 
which  Don  Juan  seeks  to  tempt  a  hapless  beggar  into 
blasphemy,  only  to  be  rebuked  by  the  simple  piety  of  the 
poor  man,  to  whom,  at  last,  he  flings  his  proffered  coin 
"for  the  love  of  humanity."  He  was  here  aiming  at  a 
loftier  mark  than  the  precieuses  and  the  pedants,  the 
bigots  and  the  hypocrites.  It  had  taken  courage  to  do 
what  he  had  done  before;  and  no  other  dramatist  of 
that  day  had  dared  to  follow  in  his  footsteps.  To  do 
what  he  did  in  'Don  Juan'  revealed  a  deeper  audacity; 
and  there  is  no  need  to  wonder  why  the  career  of  the  play 
was  cut  short. 

VI 

Spanish  origmal 


was  religious;    its  author  was  sincerely  devout;    he  in- 
tended his  drama  to  be  edifying;   and  his  ingenious  piece 


i88  MOLIERE 

had  a  close  kinship  with  'Life  is  a  Dream/  with  the 
'Devotion  to  the  Cross'  and  with  other  examples  of^Cal- 
nf  combining  mystic  emQtionaljsmwM-h 


lar  ijipatrirfllify^  This  religious  impulse  was^no,, 
longer  potent  in  the  adaptations  of  the  Italians,  whose 
devotion  had  little  spirituality  and  who  preferred  to  de- 
velop all  the  comic  possibilities  of  the  plot.  In  the  two 
French  versions  which  preceded  Moliere's,  and  which  he 
laid  under  contribution  as  was  his  custom,  the  spectacu- 
lar element  was  emphasized  and  the  characters  remained 
unreal  and  exaggerated.  It  was  left  for  Moliere  to  sharpen 
the  outlines  of  these  characters,  to  make  them  obey  the 
logic  of  their  own  natures,  to  give  them  the  reality  which 
they  lacked. 

Keeping  as  much  as  he  must  of  the  framework  of  the 
legend,  Moliere  profoundly  modifies  the  figures  involved 
in  it,  by  making  them  veracious,  by  bringing  them  back 
to  our  common  humanity.  In  endowing  them  with 
vitality,  he  enlarges  their  significance  and  he  makes 
possible  the  later  cosmopolitan  travels  of  Don  Juan. 
The  Spanish  quality  of  the  play  disappears  or  is  at  least 
greatly  reduced;  and  the  subject  is  made  French,  with 
the  gravity  which  the  French  derived  from  the  Latins 
and  with  the  gaiety  which  descends  to  them  from  the 
Gauls.  Thus  enlarged,  thus  lifted  up,  the  theme  became 
capable  of  universality,  and  it  was  ready  to  wander  from 
land  to  land  and  from  art  to  art.  A  story  essentially 
jTLgdieval 1  thusjbecame  modern  and-CQ^mopoljtai} . 

It  is  the  Don  Juan  of  Moliere  who  is  the  immediate 
ancestor  of  the  conscienceless_Jascinator  of  Byron  aruL 
Merimee.  of  Mozart  and  Musset.     It  is  to  Moliere  that 
the   perversely   attractive   figure   of  Don^u^n   owes   its 
elevation,,    its    largeness,    its    mnjur    meaning/    It    is  ^n^ 


DON  JUAN'  189 

play  that  the  real  Don  Jngnr  as 


now  in  story,  in  song  and  in  picture,  f^rst  emerges  —  a 
freethinker  and  a  libertine,  an  atheist  who  is  also  a  hypo- 
crite, a  lordly  seducer  whose  desire  after  woman  is  physical, 
of  course,  but  psychological  also,  and  to  almost  an  equal 
extent.  It  is  in  Moliere's  play  that  we  first  find  the 
virtuoso  in  seduction,  whose  insatiable  curiosity  causes 
him  to  take  keener  pleasure  in  the  delayed  pursuit  than 
in  the  ultimate  possession,  and  who  is  therefore  con- 
demned to  lose  all  interest  in  his  conquest  as  soon  as  the 
final  resistance  is  overcome.  It  is  in  Moliere's  play 
that  we  can  first  perceive  the  Don  Juan  who  devotes  his 
life  to  loving,  who  (because  he  loves  every  woman  equally) 
loves  no  one  of  them  with  all  the  unforgetable  appeal  of 
an  overmastering  passion,  and  who  therefore  has  to  die 
without  ever  suspecting  what  love  may  be. 

It  is  only  after  Moliere  rehandled  the  legend  that  the 
.supernatural  element  —  out  of  which  the  story  had  arisen 
originally  —  lost  its  importance  and  became^  indeed  almost 
negligible.  Thereafter  what  holds  our  attention  and 
focuses  our  interest  is  not  what  happens  to  Don  Juan, 
but  what  Jie  is^  He  ceases  to  be  a  mere  wooer  at  large, 
commonplace  and  unconvincing.  He  fixes  himself  in 
our  memories  as  a  human  being,  immeshed  in  the  realities 
of  life,  subtler  than  his  Spanish-Italian  forerunner,  more 
N|  significant  and  far  more  sinister^  Moliere  may  have 
composed  'Don  Juan'  in  haste  to  serve  a  temporary 
purpose,  accepting  a  theme  which  he  might  never  have 
chosen  of  his  own  free  will,  and  his  conduct  of  his  plot 
may  be  as  careless  as  his  construction  is  straggling,  but 
he  here  revealed  a  power  of  dealing  with  the  deeper 
aspects  of  human  nature,  a  power  not  displayed  as  pro- 
foundly in  any  other  of  his  plays. 


CHAPTER  XI 
MOLIERE  AND  THE  DOCTORS 


EARLY  in  the  fall  of  this  same  year  Louis  XIV  again 
called  upon  Moliere  to  minister  swiftly  to  his  pleasure, 
and  the  dramatist  responded  with  a  celerity  which  was 
extraordinary  even  for  him.  In  five  days  he  devised, 
wrote,  rehearsed  and  produced  a  comedy-ballet,  the 
'Amour  Medecin,'  which  was  acted  before  the  king  at 
Versailles  in  the  middle  of  September,  1665,  and  brought 
out  at  the  Palais-Royal  a  few  days  later.  It  was  in  prose 
and  in  three  acts,  but  by  omitting  the  interludes  of  danc- 
ing it  could  be  presented  easily  as  a  single  act.  In  this 
merry  trifle,  improvised  hastily  at  the  monarch's  desire, 
Moliere  returned  to  the  familiar  and  convenient  frame- 
work of  the  comedy-of-masks.  The  action  takes  place 
in  the  open  air  in  front  of  the  house  of  Sganarelle. 

The  plot  of  the  little  play  is  as  simple  as  may  be;  but 
however  slight  in  texture  it  is  sufficient  for  its  immediate 
purpose.  Moliere  himself  appeared  as  Sganarelle,  not 
here  the  shrewd  servant  of  'Don  Juan,'  but  the  more 
narrow-minded  and  obstinate  type  seen  earlier  in  the 
'Ecole  des  Maris.'  He  is  now  a  widower  with  one 
daughter,  Lucinde  (probably  impersonated  by  Mademoi- 
selle Moliere).  The  father  wishes  to  keep  his  daughter 
for  himself,  but  the  daughter  prefers  to  be  married  to  a 

190 


MOLIERE  AND  THE  DOCTORS          191 

young  man  who  has  sought  her  hand,  Clitandre  (acted 
by  La  Grange).  She  pretends  to  be  ill  and  Sganarelle 
seeks  advice,  first  from  various  friends,  and  then  finally 
from  four  physicians  called  in  consultation  upon  her 
case.  The  doctors  disagree,  and  two  of  them,  after  pro- 
posing radically  different  treatments,  quarrel  violently. 
A  little  later  Lisette,  the  maid,  brings  in  Clitandre  dis- 
guised as  a  physician.  The  young  lover  deceives  the 
father  into  consenting  to  his  daughter's  marriage,  Sgan- 
arelle supposing  that  this  is  only  a  pretense,  likely  to 
arouse  Lucinde  out  of  her  melancholy.  When  he  discov- 
ers that  she  is  really  wedded  to  Clitandre  the  play  is  over. 

This  unpretending  little  farce,  significant  only  as  an 
example  of  Moliere's  fertility  and  facility,  is  brisk  and 
lively  in  its  movement.  It  was  probably  effective  enough 
on  the  stage  when  performed  by  Moliere  and  his  com- 
rades; and  it  is  in  the  theater  that  its  merits  would  be 
most  evident.  In  the  preface,  wherein  the  author  ex- 
plains that  the  piece  was  written  to  order  at  topmost 
speed,  Moliere  modestly  asserts  that  it  contained  much 
which  was  dependent  chiefly  on  the  skill  of  the  performers. 
And  he  adds  a  remark  characteristic  of  the  professional 
playwright  who  has  planned  his  work  for  the  actual 
theater:  "Every  one  knows  that  comedies  are  written 
only  to  be  acted." 

But  the  interest  of  this  amusing  little  piece  when  it 
was  first  performed  did  not  lie  in  the  adroitness  of  the 
acting  or  in  the  humorous  ingenuity  of  its  situations;  it 
resided  rather  in  the  four  physicians  who  meet^in_  con- 
sultation. To  us  in  the  twentieth  century  they  seem  to 
be  artfully  contrasted  types  of  the  practitioners  of  medicine  '. 
of  those  remote  days;  but  to  the  Parisian  playgoers  in  the 
later  seventeenth  century  they  were  recognizable  carica- 


192  MOLIERE 

tures  of  living  men,  somewhat  exaggerated  portrayals  of 
four  of  the  leading  doctors  of  the  court,  each  of  them 
endowed  with  the  individual  peculiarities  of  the  original. 
This  was  an  Aristophanic  license  of  personal  caricature, 
which  is  here  without  offense  or  ill-will,  for  Moliere  was 
not  here  attacking  the  persons  or  the  characters  of  these 
physicians.  He  was  using  them  only  as  the  means  of 
showing  up  the  hollowness  of  the  pretensions  of  the  whole 
medical  profession  of  his  own  day. 

II 

It  was  in  'Don  Juan'  that  Moliere  had  first  girded  at 
the  practitioners  of  the  healing  art.  When  Don  Juan 
and  Sganarelle  have  to  disguise  themselves,  the  latter 
appears  in  the  flowing  robe  of  a  physician,  giving  his 
master  an  occasion  for  a  few  bitter  gibes  against  the 
doctors;  and  this  shocks  Sganarelle,  horrified  to  find 
that  Don  Juan,  a  skeptic  in  religion,  is  also  a  skeptic  in 
medicine.  It  was  in  the  'Amour  Medecin'  that  Moliere 
first  declared  open  war  against  the  faculty,  that  guerrilla 
warfare  which  he  was  to  keep  up  for  the  rest  of  his  life, 
returning  to  the  attack  in  play  after  play,  as  though  he 
were  as  bitter  against  the  doctors  as  he  was  against  the 
pedants  and  the  hypocrites.  The  explanation  of  this 
.  hostility  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  Moliere  held  the 
physicians  of  his  time  to  be  both  pedants  and  hypocrites. 
For  affectation  in  all  its  phases,  for  pretenders  of  every 
kind,  for  humbugs  of  all  sorts,  Moliere  had  a  keen  eye 
and  a  hearty  detestation.  On  them  and  on  them  only 
he  was  always  swift  to  pour  the  vials  of  his  wrath;  and  he 
was  never  moved  to  assault  unless  his  hostile  contempt 
was  awakened  by  his  acute  instinct  for  a  sham. 


MOLIERE  AND  THE  DOCTORS          193 

In  every  period  there  are  certain  callings  or  professions, 
as  the  case  may  be,  which  the  average  man  of  that  epoch 
delights  in  abusing;  and  we  are  not  to-day  prompter 
to  make  fun  of  the  plumber  than  the  people  of  the  Middle 
Ages  were  to  crack  jokes  at  the  expense  of  the  miller.  The 
source  of  the  irritation  which  thus  seeks  vent  in  humorous 
girding  is  the  same:  it  is  the  result  of  our  knowledge 
that  we  cannot  control  the  accounts  rendered  by  the  miller 
and  b^the  plumber.  We  must  accept  them  as  they  are 
rendered;  and  the  only  revenge  open  to  us  is  to  take  away 
the  character  of  the  craftsman  who  has  us  at  his  mercy 
and  whom  we  cannot  help  suspecting.  In  all  ages,  at 
least  ever  since  law  and  medicine  were  first  recognized  as 
professions,  the  average  man  has  been  prone  to  resent 
the  air  of  mystery  assumed  by  the  lawyers  and  the  phy- 
sicians, and  to  be  annoyed  by  their  professional  self- 
assertion.  Hosts  of  merry  jests,  directed  at  the  conceit  of 
the  members  of  these  two  professions,  have  been  handed 
down  from  century  to  century  or  are  born  again  by 
spontaneous  generation. 

Moliere's  immediate  predecessors  in  the  comic  drama, 
the  French  farce-writers  and  the  devisers  of  the  Italian 
comedy-of-masks,  had  drawn  unhesitatingly  from  the 
inexhaustible  arsenal  of  missiles  directed  against  the  two 
professions;  and  in  attacking  the  practitioners  of  medicine 
Moliere  was  only  doing  again  what  had  been  done  before 
him.  And  here  the  question  imposes  itself,  Why  did  he 
neglect  the  lawyers  to  concentrate  his  fire  on  the  doctors  ? 
The  answer  is  not  far  to  seek;  the  lawyers,  whatever 
faults  they  might  have,  were  not  impostors,  and  Moliere's 
resentment  is  fierce  only  against  a  humbug.  The  law 
might  lend  itself  to  chicanery,  and  to  annoying  delay  and 
ultimate  injustice,  its  procedure  might  be  complicated 


i94  MOLIERE 

and  vexations;  but  the  lawyers  did  not  pretend  to  be  in 
possession  of  mysterious  secrets,  and  they  did  their  work 
in  the  open  for  all  men  to  see.  The  physicians  made  the 
most  exalted  claims  for  their  art  and  they  demanded  to  be 
taken  on  faith,  however  helplessly  their  practice  might 
fall  below  their  preaching.  Ordinarily  the  lawyer  deals 
only  with  losses  of  money;  and  he  does  not  lay  hands  upon 
the  body  nor  require  us  to  submit  our  minds  to  his  that 
he  may  control  our  bodies.  And  this  is  what  the  physi- 
cian does  now,  always  has  done,  and  must  always  do. 
This  is  therefore  why  the  practice  of  the  law,  sharply  as 
we  may  dwell  on  its  defects,  does  not  come  home  to  us 
as  closely  as  the  practice  of  medicine,  which  must  ever 
be  a  matter  of  life  and  death. 

But  there  were  also  special  reasons  peculiar  to  his 
own  period  why  Moliere  was  moved  to  pour  out  his 
contempt  on  the  physicians.  The  reign  of  Louis  XIV 
'marks  what  is  perhaps  the  lowest  point  in  the  history  of 
fnedicine  in  France,  far  lower  than  it  had  been  a  century 
earlier  when  Rabelais  had  studied  the  art  of  healing. 
The  men  who  represented  medicine  were  narrow  and 
bigoted  conservatives,  accepting  blindly  all  that  they  had 
inherited  from  the  ancients  and  refusing  resolutely  to 
depart  from  the  practices  of  their  forefathers.  They  re- 
jected every  new  discovery  without  investigation,  scout- 
ing it  scornfully.  They  were  determined  to  maintain 
their  ancient  landmarks.  They  believed  that  medicine 
was  an  exact  science,  that  they  were  the  custodians  of 
all  its  mysteries,  and  that  what  they  did  not  know  was 
not  knowledge.  They  held  fast  to  a  body  of  doctrine, 
a  purely  theoretic  conception  of  their  art,  which  was 
almost  as  closely  reasoned  and  as  compactly  coordinated 
as  was  the  contemporary  doctrine  of  Calvin  in  matters  of 


MOLIERE  AND  THE  DOCTORS          195 

religion.  Behind  this  they  intrenched  themselves,  and 
in  defense  of  this  they  were  prepared  to  die  in  the  last 
ditch — and  to  let  their  patients  die  also. 

In  Paris  the  faculty  of  medicine  was  a  close  corpora- 
tion, bound  together  by  the  loyal  traditions  of  a  trade- 
gild  and  possessing  a  solidarity  more  substantial  than 
that  of  any  modern  trade-union.  There  were  only  about 
a  hundred  physicians  in  the  capital  and  not  more  than 
four  were  admitted  in  any  one  year.  The  cost  of  a 
medical  education  was  onerous,  and  therefore  the  faculty 
was  recruited  only  from  the  middle  class.  At  the  ex- 
aminations special  privileges  were  granted  to  the  sons  of 
physicians;  and  the  profession  thus  tended  to  be  heredi- 
tary, with  all  the  obvious  disadvantages  of  persistent 
inbreeding.  The  training  of  the  youthful  aspirant  to 
the  doctorate  was  philosophic,  not  to  say  scholastic;  and 
the  questions  propounded  to  the  candidate  were  often 
foolish.  Medicine  was  not  considered  as  an  art,  neces- 
sarily more  or  less  empirical,  but  rather  as  an  exact 
science,  lending  itself  abundantly  to  scholarly  disputation. 
The  doctors  were  generally  more  interested  in  medicine 
as  a  code  of  tradition,  and  in  their  own  strict  obedience 
to  its  precepts  and  precedents,  than  they  were  in  the  art 
of  healing  and  in  the  condition  of  the  individual  patient. 
They  were  indeed  far  more  conservative  than  the  ancients 
whom  they  bound  themselves  to  follow;  and  the  oath  of 
Hippocrates  had  a  large  liberality  which  was  lacking  in 
the  pledge  subscribed  by  the  young  doctor  in  Paris, 
which  was  little  more  than  a  promise  ever  to  defend 
sturdily  the  rights  of  the  faculty  itself. 

The  Parisian  faculty  of  medicine  rejected  the  circula- 
tion of  the  blood,  as  we  are  told  by  one  historian  of  medi- 
cine in  France,  because  this  came  from  England,  and 


196  MOLIERE 

also  the  use  of  antimony  and  of  quinine,  because  one  came 
from  Montpellier  and  the  other  from  America.  It 
refused  to  have  anything  whatever  to  do  with  surgery, 
which  it  despised;  and  students  of  medicine  were  not 
allowed  to  dissect.  The  physicians  held  surgery  to  be  a 
mere  manual  art,  unworthy  of  a  learned  profession. 
Any  physician  who  had  ever  practised  surgery  was  re- 
quired to  promise  that  he  would  never  again  descend  to 
this  craft  fit  only  for  an  artisan.  There  were  numberless 
other  absurdities  accepted  by  nearly  all  the  physicians 
of  the  time.  Bleeding  and  purging  were,  of  course,  the 
foremost  of  remedies,  since  they  were  necessary  to  rid 
the  body  of  its  "humors/1  Patients  took  medicine  or 
were  purged  not  only  for  any  ailment  they  had  but  also 
for  the  ailments  they  might  have  in  the  future,  merely  as 
a  precautionary  measure.  And  to  these  ridiculous  prac- 
tices every  one  who  consulted  a  physician  had  to  submit, 
including  the  king  himself. 

Ill 

Since  these  absurdities  and  artificialities  were  patent 
to  all,  Moliere  could  not  help  seeing  them.  He  was 
moved  to  mirthful  indignation  by  the  empty  pretensions 
of  the  physicians.  He  might  not  know  better  than  any 
other  layman  what  ought  to  be  done;  but  he  was  too 
sharp-sighted  and  keen-witted  not  to  see  that  these  things 
ought  not  to  be  done.  He  had  also  here  as  elsewhere  an 
abiding  faith  in  the  power  of  nature  to  take  care  of  itself 
and  to  work  out  its  own  salvation.  This  led  him  to 
abhor  the  endless  drugging  which  every  physician  then 
resorted  to.  It  led  him  also  to  anticipate  the  modern 
practice  of  letting  a  disease  run  its  course.  In  the  *  Amour 


MOLIERE  AND  THE  DOCTORS          197 

Medecin'  the  nimble-tongued  Lisette  tells  how  the  house- 
hold cat  had  recovered  from  a  fall  into  the  street,  after 
lying  three  days  without  eating  and  without  moving  a  paw; 
and  then  she  adds  that  there  are  no  cat-physicians, 
luckily  for  the  cat,  or  it  would  have  died  from  their  purg- 
ings  and  bleedings.  A  similar  attitude  is  taken  by  other 
characters  in  the  later  plays,  in  which  Moliere  returned 
again  to  the  attack. 

Moliere  had  had  thorough  instruction  in  the  official 
philosophy,  as  the  Jesuits  imparted  it  to  their  students; 
and  he  had  been  made  familiar  with  a  more  modern 
school  of  thought  by  Gassendi.  He  was  by  training  fitted 
to  understand  the  philosophic  foundation  on  which  were 
raised  all  the  theories  promulgated  by  the  faculty  of 
medicine;  and  his  objection  to  the  practices  of  the  French 
physicians  of  his  time  seems  to  be  due  not  more  to  the 
absurdity  of  these  practices  than  to  the  absurdity  of  the 
philosophy  which  justified  them. 

He  did  his  own  thinking  in  his  own  fashion;  and  he 
was  not  a  blind  worshiper  of  authority.  He  was  not 
overawed  by  the  revered  name  of  Hippocrates,  outside  of 
which  there  was  no  health.  Even  the  citing  of  Aristotle 
was  not  to  him  conclusive,  if  his  own  observation  revealed 
to  him  an  experience  not  obviously  in  accord  with  the 
saying  of  the  great  Greek.  It  is  not  without  significance! 
that  he  makes  one  of  his  characters  declare  that  "the,- 
ancients  are  the  ancients,  and  we  are  the  men  of  to-day." 
Moliere  was  no  iconoclast,  no  violent  revolutionary,  no 
rejecter  of  tradition  solely  because  it  was  an  inheritance. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  was  ready  to  prove  all  things  so 
that  he  might  hold  fast  that  which  was  good.  So  it  was 
that  he  detested  vain  theorizing,  and  the  building  up  of 
formulas  and  of  classifications  into  rigid  systems,  false 


198  MOLIERE 

to  the  facts  of  life  as  he  saw  them  with  his  own  eyes. 
The  medicine  of  his  day  was  a  rigid  system  of  this  sort; 
and  the  moment  he  perceived  this  clearly  he  could  not 
help  exposing  it. 

But  his  detestation  of  the  contemporary  perversions 
of  the  doctrines  of  Hippocrates  and  of  Galen  did  not  lead 
him  to  misrepresent  them.  On  the  contrary,  he  strove 
to  reproduce  them  with  the  most  conscientious  exactness. 
If  the  discussions  of  his  doctors,  their  dissertations,  their 
disputations,  seem  to  us  almost  inconceivably  ridiculous, 
this  is  because  Moliere  had  assimilated  the  theory  that 
sustained  them  and  had  absorbed  the  vocabulary  in  which 
they  were  habitually  set  forth.  To  bring  forth  abundant 
laughter  all  that  Moliere  had  to  do  was  to  show  the 
doctors  in  action,  to  isolate  this  principle  and  that,  and  to 
set  this  forth  in  their  own  jargon,  with  only  the  slight 
heightening  necessary  to  make  it  clear.  The  result  is 
inevitably  laughable,  because  of  the  fundamental  ab- 
surdity of  the  originals  thus  faithfully  portrayed. 

The  scholars  who  have  investigated  the  history  of 
medicine  in  France  are  united  in  their  admiration  for  the 
accuracy  with  which  Moliere  has  dealt  with  the  doctrines 
he  was  denouncing.  They  have  constant  praise  for  the 
certainty  with  which  he  seized  the  spirit  that  animated 
the  French  physicians  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
for  the  skill  with  which  he  caught  the  very  accent  of  their 
speech.  His  was  no  haphazard  criticism; '  it  was  rooted 
in  knowledge.  The  consultation  in  'Monsieur  de  Pour- 
ceaugnac'  is  declared  to  be  almost  phonographic  in  its 
verisimilitude.  Even  when  the  comic  dramatist  was 
moved  to  frank  caricature  and  overt  burlesque  as  in  the 
ceremony  of  the  'Malade  Imaginaire/  he  was  only  exag- 
gerating what  actually  took  place  on  similar  occasions. 


MOLIERE  AND  THE  DOCTORS          199 

His    satire,    however   grotesque   it   may   seem,    however 
broadly  humorous,  has  philosophic  truth  to  sustain  it. 

IV 

Moliere  put  into  the  'Amour  Medecin'  four  figures  of 
fun  which  his  contemporaries  recognized  as  copied  from 
certain  of  the  more  prominent  physicians  of  Paris;  but 
there  was  no  bitterness  of  personality  in  this.  It  was  the 
whole  faculty  he  was  attacking  and  the  spirit  that  governed 
this  trade-gild  of  those  who  trafficked  in  medicine.  He 
had  no  quarrel  with  any  individual  doctor;  indeed,  he 
was  on  the  best  of  terms  with  several  practitioners  of  the 
healing  art — with  La  Mothe  Le  Vayer,  for  one,  with 
Bernier,  for  another,  and  with  his  own  doctor,  Mauvillain. 

The  only  favor  that  Moliere  ever  craved  from  the 
sovereign  was  that  a  vacant  canonry  might  be  bestowed 
on  Mauvillain's  son.  This  request  he  addressed  to  the 
king  on  the  joyful  day  when  Louis  XIV  at  last  permitted 
the  public  performances  of  'Tartuffe.'  In  his  appeal 
he  told  the  monarch  that  the  physician  had  promised 
and  was  ready  to  bind  himself  under  oath  to  keep  his 
patient  alive  for  thirty  years  if  this  boon  could  be  obtained 
from  the  monarch.  The  petitioner  explained  that  he 
had  not  demanded  so  much  and  that  he  would  be  satisfied 
if  the  doctor  merely  promised  not  to  kill  him.  Grimarest 
recorded  that  the  king  once  asked  Moliere  how  he  got 
along  with  his  physician,  and  that  the  dramatist  answered, 
"Sire,  we  talk  together;  he  prescribes  remedies  for  me; 
I  do  not  take  them;  and  I  get  well." 

These  talks  together  were  probably  the  source  of 
Moliere's  accurate  and  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
principles,  the  procedure,  and  the  vocabulary  of  contem- 


200  MOLIERE 

porary  medicine.  Mauvillain  was  a  man  of  marked 
individuality,  who  had  had  his  own  troubles  in  his 
youth,  but  who  rose  in  time  to  be  dean  of  the  faculty. 
Ardent  defender  of  the  rights  of  his  gild,  he  seems  to  have 
had  a  sense  of  humor;  and  it  may  be  that  he  took  a 
malicious  pleasure  in  supplying  Moliere  with  material 
for  caricaturing  other  members  of  the  faculty  and  even 
the  faculty  itself. 

Moliere's  uncertain  health  must  often  have  given  oc- 
casion for  these  talks  with  Mauvillain;  and  although  he 
may  have  told  the  king  that  he  did  not  take  the  remedies 
his  physician  prescribed,  it  is  a  fact  that  when  he  died 
he  owed  a  heavy  bill  to  his  apothecary.  That  his  health 
was  uncertain  is  beyond  all  question.  His  lungs  were 
weak,  and  he  had  a  chronic  cough,  which  he  even  gave 
as  a  peculiarity  to  one  of  the  later  characters  he  wrote 
for  his  own  acting.  He  came  of  a  feeble  stock;  his 
mother  died  young  and  few  of  her  children  attained  long 
life.  Moliere's  younger  brother  died  before  he  did, 
and  he  himself  was  to  survive  only  until  he  was  fifty-one. 
Two  of  his  three  children  died  before  him;  and  his  only 
surviving  child,  a  daughter,  died  at  last  without  leaving 
issue. 

It  is  only  after  he  became  conscious  that  his  health 
ivas  failing  and  after  he  had  to  call  on  physicians  for  relief, 
only  then  that  he  began  to  make  fun  of  them,  when 
he  had  had  personal  experience  of  the  futility  of  their 
efforts.  Perhaps  we  may  find  the  exciting  cause  of  his 
hostility  to  the  contemporary  practice  of  medicine  in  the 
inability  of  the  contemporary  practitioners  to  alleviate 
his  own  ailments  and  to  restore  him  to  strength.  He 
continued  his  attacks  on  them  to  the  end  of  his  life;  and 
the  last  play  he  lived  to  produce,  the  'Malade  Imaginaire/ 


was 

It  IS 


MOLIERE  AND  THE  DOCTORS          201 

contained  the  most  vigorous  of  all  his  assaults,  far  more 
searching  than  the  comparatively  mild  satire  of  the 
'Amour  Medecin.' 

Early  in  the  very  winter  when  this  little  play  was  in 
the  flush  of  its  success  the  theater  had  to  be  closed  for 
nearly  two  months,  partly  because  of  the  death  of  the 
queen-mother  and  partly  because  of  Moliere's  own  ill- 
health.  That  he  was  not  in  the  full  possession  of  his 
powers  at  this  period  of  his  career  seems  to  be  proved 
by  the  unusually  long  interval  which  elapsed  between 
the  production  of  'Don  Juan'  and  the  first  perform- 
ance of  his  next  important  play,  the  'Misanthrope/  a 
period  of  sixteen  months,  broken  only  by  the  improv- 
isation of  the  'Amour  Medecin'  in  five  days.  It  is 
true  that  he  was  still  constantly  hoping  for  the  removal 
of  the  interdict  on  'Tartuffe,'  and  that  this  hope  may 
have  delayed  his  undertaking  a  new  play.  But  the  delay 
is  significant,  none  the  less,  since  Moliere  was  always  a 
swift  worker,  and  since  he  had  the  abundant  productivity 
of  affluent  genius.  Once,  at  least,  he  brought  out  three 
of  his  larger  plays  within  the  space  of  a  single  calendar 
year.  The  total  number  of  his  pieces  and  also  the  aver- 
age of  his  annual  production,  may  be  compared  with 
Shakspere's.  The  English  dramatist,  as  it  happens, 
gave  up  playwriting  when  he  was  about  the  age  at  which 
the  French  dramatist  had  his  career  cut  short  by  death. 
But  Shakspere's  work  was  spread  over  a  longer  period 
of  time  than  that  of  Moliere,  whose  achievement  was 
concentrated  within  the  final  fifteen  years  of  his  life, 
from  thirty-six  to  fifty-one. 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  'MISANTHROPE* 

I 

THE  play  which  Moliere  produced  after  this  pro- 
tracted interval  was  worth  waiting  for;  and  it  may  well 
have  demanded  an  unusual  time  for  its  conception,  its 
construction  and  its  verbal  perfecting.  It  was  the  'Mis- 
anthrope,' a  comedy  in  five  acts,  in  verse,  brought  out  at 
the  Palais-Royal  in  June,  i^^  when  Moliere  was  forty- 
four  years  old,  and  in  the  ripe  plenitude  of  his  powers. 

This  new  play,  long  in  its  incubation,  was  composed 
while  its  author  was  undergoing  unusual  strain.  He  was 
not  in  good  health  and  he  was  worn  by  the  deferred  hope 
that  'Tartuffe'  might  still  be  permitted;  and  it  is  easy  to 
perceive  the^ffects  of  this  struggle  agal 


in  the  'Misanthrope/  He  was  also  suffering  from  discord 
in  his  own  household.  The  incompatibility  of  temper 
between  himself  and  his  young  wife  had  at  last  declared 
itself  violently.  He  loved  Armande  Bejart  passionately 
and  jealously.  She  appears  to  have  been  incapable  of 
appreciating  this  ardent  devotion;  and  perhaps  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  she  was  unworthy  of  it.  She  was 
light-hearted  and  headstrong;  and  she  seems  to  have  been 
rather  chilly  in  temperament.  Moreover,  Moliere  was 
probably  not  easy  to  live  with,  often  silent,  sometimes 


202 


THE  'MISANTHROPE'  203 

moody,  and  always  busy.  The  breach  between  them  had 
now  brought  about  a  temporary  separation,  although 
husband  and  wife  had  to  meet  in  the  theater.  Perhaps 
these  daily  meetings  at  rehearsal  and  during  the  perform- 
ances intensified  the  husband's  sufferings;  and  traces  of 
his  exasperation  from  this  cause  also  can  be  discovered 
in  the  'Misanthrope/ 

B^jpostjjrench  critics  this  play  of ,MoIiere!s,js  held  Jto 
be  the  loftiest  achievement  of  French  comedy,  the  inap- 
proachable masterpiece  of  the  foremost  of  comic  drama- 
tists. This  high  opinion  is  shared  by  many  critics  of 
other  nationalities.  George^  Eliot  described  jt  as  "the 
foremost  and  most  complete  production  of  its  kind  in  the 
world";  and  Lord  Morley  called  it  "that  inscrutable 
piece  where,  without  plot,  fable  or  intrigue,  we_see_a^ection 
of  the  polished  life  of  the  time,  men  and  women  paying 
visits,  making  and  receiving  compliments,  discoursing 
upon  affairs  with  easy  lightness,  flitting  backwards  and 
forwards  with  a  thousand  petty  worries,  and  among  them 
one  strange,  rough,  hoarse,  half-somber  figure,  moving  v 
solitarily  with  a  chilling  reality  in  the  midst  of  a  world  of 
shadows." 

And  yet  this  masterpiece,  in  which  Moliere  has  most 
completely  expressed  himself,  did  not  win  the  immediate 
popularity  in  the  theater  which  had  been  attained  by 
several  of  his  earlier  plays  of  a  far  slighter  importance. 
The  best  judges  saw  its  merits  at  once  and  praised  it  un- 
hesitatingly; but  it  had  no  proportionate  attraction  for  the 
public  as  a  whole.  It  was  not  performed  before  the  king, 
because  the  court  was  in  mourning  for  the  queen-mother 
during  the  comparatively  brief  period  when  the  play  was 
kept  on  the  boards.  It  had  an  honorable  run  when  first 
produced,  and  it  remained  in  the  repertory  for  two  or 


204 


MOLIERE 


A 


three  seasons;  but  rarely  was  it  really  remunerative  to 
the  treasury  of  the  theater.  And  in  the  two  centuries  and 
a  half  since  it  was  first  seen,  it  has  never  proved  as  in- 
teresting to  the  plain  playgoers  as  have  other  of  its  au- 
thor's comedies  which  are  far  less  highly  acclaimed. 
Every  French  comedian  of  distinction  has  aspired  to  play 
Alceste,  as  every  English  tragedian  of  distinction  has 
aspired  to  play  Hamlet;  but  whereas  Shakspere's  master- 
piece sustains  the  actor,  even  if  he  is  not  really  equal  to 
its  performance,  Moliere's  masterpiece,  even  if  it  richly 
rewards  the  efforts  of  the  actor,  rarely  arouses  the  en- 
thusiasm of  an  average  audience. 

The  reason  for  this  relative  failure  of  the1  public  to  re- 
spond to  Moliere's  noblest  achievement  is  not  far  to  seek. 
The  (  Misanthrope'  lacks  the  powerful  structure  of  *Tar- 
tuffe,'  and  the  variety  of  incident  of  'Don  Juan.'  As 
Lord  Morley  put  it,  perhaps  a  little  too  strongly,  the  play 
is  "without  plot,  fable  or  intrigue."  .Its  qualities 
literary  rather  than  theatric,  philosophic  and  psych 
logic  rather  than  dramaturgic.  On  the  stage  literature 
must  be  sustained  by  drama.  If  the  play  itself,  the  plot, 
the  fable,  the  intrigue,  grips  the  attention  of  the  spectator, 
then  it  can  be  surcharged  with  all  the  philosophy  and  with 
all  the  poetry  that  the  author  may  please  to  put  into  it. 
But  in  the  theater  psychology  is  never  acceptable  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  dramaturgy.  And  in  the  composition  of  the 
'Misanthrope,'  Moliere  for  once  forgot  the  lesson  which 
he  had  learned  from  the  Italians  and  which  he  had  kept 
in  mind  while  he  was  building  the  solid  foundation  of 
'Tartuffe.'  He  seems  to  have  been  so  absorbed-.1'"  fhe  x 
projection  of  the  congenial  figure  of  Alceste  that  he  did 
not  trouble  to  invent  a  story  strong  enough  to  serve  as  a 
supporting  frame  for  it. 


o- 


-- 


.xdi< 


THE  'MISANTHROPE'  205 

So  it  is  that  the  play,  superb  as  it  is,  wants  progressive 
intensity  of  movement.  Indeed,  it  is  almost  open  to  the 
charge  of  monotony,  since  its  incidents  are  devised  mainly 
to  afford  Alceste  a  succession  of  opportunities  for  the  dis-t 
play  of  his  hostile  contempt  for  social  hypocrisies.  The 
action  of  'Tartuffe'  rolls  forward  steadily  with  increasing 
force  and  with  cumulative  interest,  whereas  the  action  of 
the  'Misanthrope'  may  be  said  to  revolve  around  Alceste 
himself,  leaving  most  of  the  characters  at  the  end  very 
much  where  they  were  at  the  beginning;  in  other  words, 
the  'Misanthrope'  is  a  picture  of  society,  with  more  or  less1 
of  the  immobility  of  a  painting.  Moliere  is  not  only  a 
playwright,  he  is  a  philosopher  also,  as  a  true  dramatist 
must  ever  be;  and  in  'Tartuffe'  and  in  the  'Femmes 
Savantes/  we  can  see  the  philosopher  and  the  playwright 
working  together  on  equal  terms,  each  aiding  the  other, 
whereas  in  the  '  Misanthrope'  we  suspect  that  the  philos- 
opher  for  once  got  the  better  of  the  playwright,  tempting 
him  to  be  satisfied  with  a  story  which  is  at  once  a  little  too 
empty  and  too  episodic. 


II 

The  history  of  dramatic  literature  reveals  to  us  also  the 
significant  fact  that  most  successful  dramatists,  the  un- 
disputed masters  of  this  form  of  literature,  have  often 
begun  by  being  little  more  than  adroit-  playwrights,  un- 
ambitiously  providing  the  public  with  the  kind  of  piece  it 
had  been  accustomed  to  enjoy.  Thus  Shakspere  first 
followed  modestly  in  the  footsteps  of  Marlowe  and  Kyd, 
of  Lyly  and  Greene;  and  thus  Moliere  himself  accepted 

e  model  of  the  unpretending  comedy-of-masks.  Then, 
as  these  authors  grow  in  authority,  their  ambition  wakens 


206  MOLIERE 

and  they  cease  to  be  imitators.  They  find  themselves 
able  to  educate  their  audience  to  accept  plays  richer 
and  deeper  than  it  had  desired.  They  still  give  the  public 
what  it  wants,  while  also  giving  it  what  they  themselves 
want.  At  last,  there  may  come  a  period  in  their  careers 
when  the  need  of  pleasing  the  audience  is  less  imperative 
than  their  desire  to  express  themselves  abundantly  and  to 
body  forth  their  own  interpretation  of  life,  as  they  feel 
it  in  the  full  maturity  of  their  genius.  And  here  is  the 
moment  of  danger,  since  the  more  completely  a  dramatist 
puts  himself  into  his  plays  the  more  likely  he  is  to  separate 
himself  more  or  less  from  the  main  body  of  his  contem- 
poraries, because  his  own  individuality  is  necessarily  set 
apart  from  their  collective  personality. 

At  this  stage  of  his  development  the  dramatist  is  unex- 
pectedly lucky  if  he  happens  on  a  plot  like  that  of  *  Ham- 
let,' which  is  broad  in  its  appeal  to  the  myriad-minded 
public,  and  yet  fit  to  carry  the  poet's  own  message  with 
all  its  profundities  of  meaning.  And  here  Moliere  was 
not  so  fortunate  as  Shakspere,  and  the  play  into  which  he 
put  the  most  of  himself  is  far  from  possessing  the  many 
elements  of  theatrical  popularity  which  we  perceive  in  the 
play  in  which  Shakspere  expressed  himself  most  satisfac- 
torily. The  French  dramatist  overestimated  the  ability 
of  the  spectators  to  be  interested  in  what  was  most  inter- 
esting to  him.  And  it  is  proof  of  his  ability  to  profit  by 
experience  that  he  never  repeated  the  mistake  he  had 
made  in  the  'Misanthrope,'  as  he  never  repeated  the  mis- 
take he  had  made  in  'Don  Garcie.'  The  unwillingness  of 
his  public  to  be  entertained  by  his  masterpiece  of  comedy 
because  it  was  not  supported  by  a  story  which  gripped 
their  sympathy,  served  as  a  warning  to  him;  and  in  no 
one  of  his  later  plays  did  he  fail  to  remember  it.  In  these 


THE  'MISANTHROPE5  207 

subsequent  comedies  he  might  do  what  he  wished  and  say 
what  he  wished,  but  he  took  care  also  to  provide  the 
spectators  with  what  he  knew  they  expected. 


Ill 

In  'Tartuffe'  Moliere  puts  on  the  stage  a  family  of  the 
middle  class.  In  the  (  Misanthrope'  he  presents  a  picture 
of  the  "best  society"  of  his  time,  and  his  characters  are 
courtiers  and  women  of  fashion,  frequenters  of  the  Louvre  ,. 
and  Versailles,  claiming  acquaintance  with  the  sovereign 
himself.  Appropriately  the  successive  episodes  of  the 
play  take  place  in  the  drawing-room  of  Celimene,  a  young 
widow  who  has  a  host  of  admirers  and  who  seems  to  be 
on  the  point  of  accepting  Alceste,  in  spite  of  the  violence 
with  which  he  expresses  his  abhorrence  for  the  company 
in  which  she  shines.  In  the  very  first  scene  we  behold  % 
Alceste  holding  forth  to  his  friend,  Philinte,  who  does  not 
disagree  with  his  condemnatory  opinion  of  the  circle  in 
which  they  move,  but  who  disapproves  of  the  exaggeration 
of  Alceste'  s  speech  and  action.  Philinte  is  possessed  by 
the  social  instinct  which  makes  him  almost  as  tolerant 
to  the  knave  as  to  the  fool.  Alceste>is  plain-spoken  to 
excess,  and  sincere  almost  to  absurdity^  When  Oronte, 
another  of  Celimene's  suitors,  chances  in,  and  after  flatter- 
ing him  elaborately,  asks  his  opinion  of  a  newly  written 
sonnet,  Alceste  is  frank  to  the  verge  of  brutality,  insisting 
on  the  worthlessness  of  the  little  poem.  Oronte  is  natu- 

^^^^••••••••••"l*.  .....  i  •  H«  - 

rally  outraged  by  this  direct  discourtesy.     And  this  is  the 
first  act. 

When  the  curtain  rises  again,  Alceste  is  making  love  to 
Celimene  by  jealously  protesting  against  her  complacent 
acceptance  of  attentions  from  other  of  her  admirers,  Cli- 


208  MOLIERE 

tandre  and  Acaste.  Just  then  these  two  are  announced; 
and  with  them  come  Philinte  also,  and  Eliante,  a  cousin 
of  Celimene's,  who  lives  with  her,  and  whose  hand  Philinte 
is  seeking.  Celimene  insists  upon  Alceste's  remaining. 
It  is  with  an  indignation  that  boils  over  again  and  again 
that  he  listens  to  the  ensuing  conversation,  in  which 
Celimene  takes  the  lead  lightly,  as  if  glad  to  display  her 
cleverness,  and  in  which  she  wittily  sketches  a  series  of 
satiric  portraits  of  her  acquaintance  in  the  fashion  of  the 
time,  everyone  of  them  brilliantly  colored  by  her  gay 
malice.  (This  effective  scene  obviously  served  as  the 
model  for  the  similar  episode  in  Sheridan's  'School  for 
Scandal.')  Then  Alceste  is  unexpectedly  called  away  to  a 
court  of  honor,  convoked  by  the  insulted  Oronte.  And 
this  is  the  second  act. 

When  the  play  begins  again  we  are  introduced  to  a  new 
character,  Arsinoe,  a  mature  prude,  who  also  is  in  love 
with  Alceste,  and  who  is  therefore  jealous  of  the  woman 
to  whom  he  is  devoted.  She  has  come  to  have  it  out  with 
her  rival;  and  there  and  then  the  two  ladies  have  a  bout 
with  the  buttons  off,  each  of  them  getting  home  more  than 
once  under  her  adversary's  guard.  When  Alceste  returns, 
Celimene  leaves  him  with  Arsinoe,  who  promptly  informs 
him  that  she  can  prove  that  her  rival  is  engaged  in  a  flirta- 
tion with  one  of  his  rivals,  and  she  carries  him  off  to  get 
the  letter  which  will  substantiate  her  accusation.  But 
before  going,  she  intimates,  with  unexpected  directness, 
that  if  he  should  break  off  with  Celimene,  she  might  be 
willing  to  console  him  herself.  And  this  is  the  third  act. 

When  the  interact  is  over  we  find  Philinte  and  Eliante 
in  conversation.  They  both  express  their  high  regard  for 
Alceste,  and  she  admits  an  even  tenderer  feeling  for  him. 
But  this  does  not  prevent  Philinte  from  asking  her  to  ac- 


THE  ' MISANTHROPE'  209 

cept  him  in  case  Alceste  should  finally  marry  her  cousin. 
Then  Alceste  comes  back  again,  infuriated  by  the  letter  of~~~ 
Celimene' s  which  Arsinoe  has  given  to  him.  When  he  is 
left  alone  with  the  woman  he  loves,  he  confronts  her  with 
the  evidence  of  her  duplicity  and  overwhelms  her  with 
reproaches.  She  meets  him  calmly  and  disarms  him  by 
asking  him  what  right  he  has  to  assume  that  her  letter 
was  written  to  a  man,  since  it  bears  no  address  and  it 
might  have  been  sent  to  a  woman.  For  this  he  has  no 
response;  and  in  the  ardor  of  his  passion  he  overrules 
his  suspicion  and  his  jealousy,  and  urges  his  suit  once 
more.  At  this  moment  his  servant  comes  in  to  inform 
him  that  a  paper  has  been  served  on  him,  a  paper  which 
obviously  refers  to  an  important  lawsuit  and  which  the 
blundering  lackey  has  left  at  home.  Alceste  goes  perforce 
to  learn  what  may  be  the  contents  of  this  document.  And 
this  is  the  fourth  act. 

At  the  opening  of  the  final  act  Alceste  tells  Philinte  that 
he  has  lost  his  lawsuit,  merely  because  he  had  refused  to 
comply  with  the  corrupt  custom  of  cajoling  the  judges. 
He  is  highly  indignant  at  this  miscarriage  of  justice,  and 
he  refuses  to  take  an  appeal,  preferring  to  be  a  martyr 
to  the  iniquity  of  procedure.  Then  Oronte  appears  and 
asks  Celimene  to  decide  once  for  all  between  him  and 
Alceste,  who  accepts  the  challenge.  Celimene  refuses  to 
declare  herself  on  a  summons  so  peremptory.  Finally 
Acaste  and  Clitandre  return  with  Arsinoe.  They  have 
got  possession  of  another  letter  of  Celimene's,  in  which 
her  satiric  wit  has  ]ed  Jier  to  hold  all  her  admirers  up  to 
ridicule,  one  after  another,  including  even  Alceste.  Thus 
suddenly  betrayed,  Celimene  expresses  her  contrition  to 
Alceste,  who  forgives  her  on  condition  that  she  will  give 
up  society  and  come  with  him  to  live  in  a  desert  far  from 


210  MOLIERE 

the  pestilent  insincerity  of  the  fashionable  world.  In 
spite  of  her  genuine  love  for  Alceste  this  unattractive  pro- 
posal does  not  tempt  her;  and  he  breaks  away  to  rush 
forth  alone  into  the  solitude  which  will  spare  him  the 
spectacle  of  human  meanness,  Philinte  begs  Eliante  to 
accompany  him  in  an  effort  to  dissuade  Alceste  from  this 
exile.  And  this  is  the  end  of  the  play. 

IV 

The  first  comment  evoked  by  this  meager  outline  of  the 
'Misanthrope'  is  that  Moliere's  contemporaries  acknowl- 
edged its  accuracy  as  a  picture  of  the  "best  society"  of 
the  time.  They  would  have  conceded  that  it  conformed 
/  to  the  idea  of  comedy,  accepted  by  Ben  Jonson,  as  "the 
imitation  of  life,  the  mirror  of  manners  and  the  image  of 
truth."  And  Taine,  in  his  estimate  of  the  'Ancien 
Regime,'  continually  called  upon  Moliere  as  an  unim- 
peachable witness.  Now,  if  it  is  a  fact  that  this  play 
reproduces,  as  exactly  as  a  play  can  reproduce  it,  the  tone 
of  the  upper  circles  of  France  under  Louis  XIV,  then  the 
second  comment  inevitably  follows,  to  the  effect  that  the 
men  and  women  who  then  moved  on  that  elevated  social 
plane  fall  far  below  the  standard  set  for  ladies  and  gentle- 
men in  our  own  republican  times.  We  can  find  in  this 
veracious  masterpiece  ample  evidence  of  the  amelioration 
of  manners,  if  not  of  morals,  during  the  past  two  centuries. 
For  it  is  a  sorry  spectacle  that  Moliere  invites  us  to  gaze 
at.  Beneath  the  high  polish  of  that  courtly  era  we  can 

— — •••^•••^•••^^^^•^•••••^•••••••••••••-  -JJ j ^_ 

see  the  underlying  coarseness  of  fiber.  Beneath^  the  ^var- 
nish  of  politeness  there  is  fundamental  vulgarity  of  feeling 
and  thought  and  act.  Superficially  the  characters  of  this 
comedy  may  be  well-bred,  and  they  display  the  airs  and 


THE  'MISANTHROPE'  211 

graces  of  people  of  quality;  but  at  bottom  they  are 
almost  devoid  of  common  decency,  as  we  understand  this 
to-day.  The  quarrel  of  Celimene  and  Arsinoe  is  frankly 
brutal,  for  all  its  suavity  of  phrase;  it  is  not  unworthy 
of  two  fishwives  disputing  in  the  market.  Equally  gross 
is  the  scene  in  the  last  act  when  one  marquis  abetted  by 
another  insults  Celimene,  in  whose  house  they  all  are,  by 
reading  aloud  in  her  presence  a  letter  written  by  her, 
which  no  gentleman  had  any  right  even  to  glance  at  with- 
out  her  permission,  and  this  unpardonable  rudeness  calls 
forth  no  objection  from  any  of  the  courtiers  present.  Ap- 
parently they  saw  no  harm  in  this  betrayal  of  ordinary 
propriety.  And  in  the  preceding  act,  Alceste,  the  honest 
Alceste,  is  guilty  of  the  indefensible  indelicacy  of  making 
use  of  another  of  Celimene's  letters,  given  to  him  by  a 
jealous  woman,  who  had  brazenly  avowed  her  interest  in 
him  and  who  had  no  right  whatever  to  be  in  possession  of 
her  rival's  missive. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  when  Moliere  paints  the  so- 
cial leaders  of  his  time  in  these  black  colors  and  with  these 
bold  strokes,  he  is  in  agreement  with  the  record  of  Saint- 
Simon.  The  frequenters  of  the  court  were  not  only  incon- 
ceivably petty  in  their  outlook  and  immeasurably  frivolous 
in  their  interests,  they  were  also  often  harsh  and  heart- 
less; and  here  they  had  an  example  in  Louis  XIV,  who 
was  icily  callous  in  his  indifference  to  others.  There  was 
a  cold-blooded  disregard  for  all  those  who  did  not  stand  on 
a  level  with  them  socially.  There  was  a  hardness  which 
was  sometimes  almost  inhuman.  Young  nobles  did  not 
hesitate  to  mutilate  a  poor  apprentice  whom  they  might 
catch  as  they  were  returning  from  a  debauch;  and  they 
knew  well  enough  that  their  quality  protected  them  and 
that  their  victim  had  no  redress  even  when  his  injuries 


212  MOLIERE 

might  be  fatal.  Women  of  high  rank  made  a  habit  of  ill- 
treating  and  even  of  beating  their  female  servants.  For 
all  its  charm  and  however  glittering  its  veneer,  the  period 
of  Louis  XIV  reveals  itself  as  an  age  of  grossness  and 
brutality,  not  so  far  removed  from  the  despicable  cruelty 
of  the  Fronde.  And  what  made  it  more  hideous  beneath 
its  outward  semblance  of  elegance,  was  the  fact  that  it  did 
not  suspect  its  own  vileness. 

There  were  protests  against  the  impiety  of  'Don  Juan'; 
but  no  one  rose  up  to  deny  the  veracity  of  Moliere's  por- 
trayal of  the  great  lord  who  is  also  a  wicked  man.  Mp- 
liere  makes  Alceste  pour  forth  his  indignation  against  the 
flagrant  corruptibility  of  the  judges;  but  no  one  of  the 
spectators  of  the  comedy  saw  any  reason  to  declare  that 
the  dramatist  had  misrepresented  the  manners  and  cus- 
toms of  the  "best  society."  Obviously  enough,  Moliere 
himself  did  not  perceive  the  vices  of  this  society  as  clearly 
as  we  do  nowadays  on  the  testimony  of  his  own  plays. 
Obviously  also  he  seems  to  us  now  far  more  aggressive  in 
his  attitude  than  he  appeared  to  his  contemporaries.  Yet 
he  had  seen  the  evil  of  the  Fronde  with  his  own  eyes  and 
he  had  himself  suffered  insult  and  injury  from  those  born 
to  superior  station.  No  wonder  is  it  that  his  heart  was 
hot  within,  him,  even  if  he  was  no  revolutionary  and  no 
iconoclast. 


That  Moliere  was  no  revolutionary  and  not  even  a 
political  reformer  is  evident  from  his  attitude  in  this  play. 
He  was  not  assaulting  the  major  abuses  of  the  political 
organization  of  France;  he  was  attacking  only  the  minor 
blemishes  of  social  intercourse,  not  even  peculiar  to  his 
own  time  or  nation.  In  no  other  play  did  he  more  clearly 


THE  'MISANTHROPE'  213 

display  the  depth  and  the  subtlety  of  his  observation  or 
more  plainly  prove  that  he  was  truly  a  poet.     But  he  was 
a  comic  poet  after  all;  and  Alceste  is  neither  a  Hamlet1' 
nor  a  Faust.     The  'Misanthrope'  is  a  comedy  and  not  a 
tragedy,  even  if  its  central  character  may  seem  to  us  too  > 
austere  to~  Be  Truly  comic.     So  Shylock  impresses  us  nowa-  | 
days  as  almost  tragic  in  his  intensity,  although  he  may  \ 
have  been  primarily  comic  to  his  creator.     Quite  possibly 
Cervantes  did  not  see  in  Don  Quixote  the  high  seriousness 
that  we  now  perceive  in  that  pathetically  humorous  figure. 
It  is  the  good  fortune  of  every  masterpiece  to  enlarge  its 
meaning  century  after  century  and  to  be  enriched  by  all 
that  later  generations  can  read  into  it. 

Those  who  persist  in  accepting  Alceste  as  tragic  in 
its  author's  intent,  forgot  that  Moliere  was  ever  a  humorist, 
even  if  he  was  likewise  a  poet.  He  was  a  philosopher 
also,  but  a  laughing  philosopher.  And  above  all  was  he 
a  comic  actor,  devising  Alceste  for  his  own  acting.  If  the 
play  was  accepted  by  the  Parisian  public  with  Moliere 
in  the  chief  part  it  must  have  been  comic  then,  however 
heroic  it  may  seem  to  some  of  us  now,  since  we  know  that 
Moliere  had  not  been  able  to  win  approval  as  an  actor 
jn  any  but  comic  characters.  His  audiences  came  to  his 
theater  expecting  him  to  make  them  laugh;  and  it  was 
only  five  years  before  the  production  of  the  ' Misanthrope' 
that  'Don  Garcie'  had  failed  chiefly  because  Moliere  had 
chosen  to  disconcert  his  habitual  spectators  by  appearing 
before  them  in  a  heroic  part.  Beyond  all  question,  Mo-  v  V 
Here  meant  Alceste  to  evoke  laughter,  even  if  he  intended 
him  also  to  provoke  thought.  i 

Comedy  deals  with  the  foibles  of  humanity  and  not 
with  the  overwhelming  passions  to  which  tragedy  alone 
may  lay  claim.  And  in  this  comedy  Moliere  set  before  us 


214  MOLIERE 

the  conflict  between  an  uncompromising  character  and  a 
society  which  cannot  exist  without  incessant  compromise. 
Here  the  essential  struggle  which  the  drama  demands 
is  the  eternal  antithesis  between  the  several  individuals 
who  make  up  a  community  and  the  social  bond  which 
unites  them.  Obedience  to  this  social  bond  brings  amen- 
ity and  urbanity;  but  subservience  to  it,  an  obsequious 
following  of  its  behests,  leads  to  insincerity  and  hypoc- 
risy, which  are  in  turn  disintegrating  to  society.  And 
here  is  the  originality  of  this  comedy  and  its  superiority 
to  all  those  that  Moliere  had  earlier  written,  that  he  was 
not  content  merely  to  create  characters  as  in  his  preceding 
plays,  but  that  he  rook  society  itself  as  his  subject,  hand- 
ling boldly  the  relation  of  man  to  his  fellows  and  bringing 
out  the  deceitfulness  of  the  conventions  on  which  human 
intercourse  rests.  Even  if  this  struggle  might  have  been 
treated  tragically,  it  is  the  very  stuff  out  of  which  comedy 
is  made. 

Alceste  may  be  a  misanthrope,  although  this  is  not 
what  we  should  have  called  him  if  his  creator  had  not 
bidden  us  to  do  so;  but  he^is^not  a  cynic,  and  he  is  not^a 
pessimist.  It  is  only  superficially  that  he  seems  like  a 
precursor  of  Rousseau,  even  if  he  does  talk  of  hiding 
himself  in  a  desert  far  from  the  haunts  of  men.  He  is 
more  intelligent  than  Dr.  Stockmann  in  Ibsen's  'Enemy 
of  the  People,'  and  perhaps  a  little  less  narrowly  obstinate. 
He  is  a  nobler  type  than  the  hero  of  'Timon  of  Athens,' 
in  that  he  is  not  moved  by  resentment  for  any  mere  per- 
sonal injustice  or  injury.  He  is  to  be  likened  rather  to 
Jaques  in  'As  You  Like  It,'  who  had  a  melancholy  of  his 
own,  compounded  of  many  simples  and  whose  boasted 
bitterness,  as  in  the  speech  on  the  seven  ages  of  man,  has 
more  than  a  hint  of  humorous  exaggeration.  He  has 


THE  ' MISANTHROPE' 


215 


even — so  Gaston  Boissier  once  suggested — a  certain  re- 
semblance to  Cato  the  younger,  a  historic  irreconcilable. 

He  has  magnanimity  of  soul  and  he  is  free  from  all 
pettiness.     He  has  been  able  to  bind  his  friends  to  him, 
men  and  women  also,  even  if  he  despises  mankind  at 
large,  because  he  cannot  help  seeing  its  manifold  mean- 
ness.    Friendship  is  his  and  love  also,  since  there  are  only 
three  women  in  the  comedy  and  all  three  of  them  express;' 
their  willingness  to  marry  him.     He  is  a  fine  fellow  at 
bottom,  with  undeniable  charm,  and  with  a  certain  sug 
gestion  of  the  heroic — which  Eliante,  for  one,  has  foun 
captivating.     He  has  manliness  and  fervor  and^ Jorce- 
which  are  perhaps  the  reasons  why  Arsinoe  makes  ad 
vances  to  him   and  why  even  the   flirtatious   and   ligh 
hearted  Celimene  prefers  him  above  all  her  other  suitor 
There  is  even  eloquence  in  his  more  exalted   outbreak 
which  nobody  seems  to  take  seriously;    and  there  is  fa 
cination  in  his  exuberant  personality. 

Perhaps  Alceste  dimly  perceives  the  impression  he 
makes  and  is  encouraged  to  further  extravagance  of  speech. 
He  is  proud  of  his  virtue;  he  parades  it  and  he  pushes  it 
to  extremes.  He  abounds  in  his  own  sense;  and  he  finds 
constant  delight  in  unexpected  violence  of  phrase,  even 
when  he  seems  most  unconscious  of  his  own  exaggeration. 
He  is  sincere,  of  course,  and  he  is  ever  preaching  sincerity. 
But  he  is  just  as  sincere  and  as  emphatic  in  little  things 
as  in  great;  and  an  emphatic  sincerity  about  trifles  is  an 
absurdity  which  we  cannot  help  smiling  at.  But  even 
when  we  go  further  and  laugh  in  his  face,  we  laugh  at 
what  he  is  saying,  not  at  him  personally.  Alceste  him- 
self is  not  ridiculous,  even  if  his  extravagances  of  speech 
may  be.  As  a  man  he  always  retains  our  respect  and 
often  a  share  of  our  sj^n^athj^at^the  very  moment  when 


216  MOLIERE 

our  laughter  breaks  out  sharply  at  the  exaggeration  of 
his  feeling  and  of  his  phrase.  In  the  course  of  the  play 
we  laugh  with  him  perhaps  as  often  as  we  laugh  at  him. 
And  after  all  this  laughter,  we  like  him  the  better;  we 
hope  that  he  will  outgrow  his  growling;  we  may  even 
wonder  whether  he  will  not  make  his  peace  with  Celimene 
and  withdraw  his  absurd  demand  that  she  should  bury 
her  youth  in  a  desert  with  him.  Ought  not  a  comedy  to 
end  with  a  marriage  ?  And  perhaps  there  might  turn  out 
to  be  in  this  marriage  no  greater  incompatibility  of  temper 
than  in  many  another  love-match. 

For  Celimene  is  not  really  the  heartless  coquette  that 
she  seems,  even  if  there  is  a  gulf  fixed  between  her  world- 
liness  and  his  unworldliness.  Alceste  is  reasonable  to  ex- 
cess and  logical  beyond  measure;  and  Celimene,  being 
a  woman,  is  not  reasonaole  and,  indeed,  reveals  herself 
as  a  past  mistress  of  illogic.  On  the  other  hand,  with  all 
his  ability  to  reason,  he  is  radically  impractical,  while  she 
is  ready  always  to  take  the  world  as  she  finds  it  and  to 
make  herself  at  home  in  it.  Yet  the  discord  between 
them  is  not  unbridgeable.  She  is  a  little  frivolous  and  a 
little  more  than  flirtatious.  She  thinks  herself  very  clever 
with  tongue  and  pen,  a  belief  in  which  her  admirers  have 
encouraged  her  until  she  runs  into  wanton  satire.  She 
has  an  insatiable  desire  for  admiration,  and  she  is  quite 
willing  to  pay  the  price  which  incessant  attentions  demand. 
But,  when  all  is  said,  her  faults  are  venial;  they  are  ex- 
cusable on  the  score  of  her  youth. 

Even  if  she  is  incapable  of  appreciating  his  nobler 
qualities;  and  even  if  she  has  let  herself  be  tempted  into 
making  fun  of  him  behind  his  back,  she  does  prefer  him 
to  all  the  other  courtiers  who  are  dangling  after  her,  and 
she  expresses  very  prettily  her  contrition  for  her  gravest 


THE  ' MISANTHROPE'  217 

fault.  Apparently,  in  spite  of  his  jealousy  and  of  his 
absurd  violence,  she  is  really  in  love  with  him,  as  far  as 
her  rather  shallow  nature  permits.  What  more  could  he 
ask  ?  What  more  had  he  a  right  to  expect  ?  Certainly 
it  is  inexcusable  for  him  to  demand  that  she  should  re- 
nounce the  society  which  makes  up  a  large  part  of  her 
life,  to  wander  out  into  the  wilderness  with  him  alone. 

What  urges  Alceste  to  propose  that  they  should  begin 
their  married  life  in  the  desert  is  partly  his  immediate 
disgust  at  the  loss  of  his  lawsuit,  but  it  is  jtminjyhis^ innate 
jealousy.  He  wants  his  wife  all  to  himself  with  no  other 
male  of  her  own  station  within  miles  of  them.  And  there 
is  no  denying  that  Moliere  can  always  express  the  pierc- 
ing poignancy  of  jealousy.  That  Celimene  should  seem 
to  give  him  cause  for  jealousy  is  easily  explicable.  She 
is  very  young,  only  twenty,  so  that  she  must  be  almost 
in  the  first  flush  of  her  freedom  as  a  widow,  joying  in 
the  new  privilege  of  exercising  her  fascinations  at  large. 
Alceste  has  only  to  wait  a  little  and  she  will  come  to  him 
on  his  own  terms;  he  has  only  to  be  patient  with  her. 


VI 

But  to  be  patient  with  her  or  with  any  one  else  is  just 
what  Alceste  cannot  be.  He  is  as  exacting  with  her  as 
he  is  with  everybody.  And  here  is  where  Alceste  is  to  be 
sharply  distmguisKed  from  Moliere  himself.  If  we  can 
judge  his  character  by  his  career  Moliere  resembled 
Philinte  far  more  than  he  did  Alceste.  He  lent  to  his 
hero  his  own  sturdy  hatred  of  hypocrisy  and  his  own  J 
gnawing  jealousy;  but  he  had  himself  none  of  the  extrav- 
agance wTith  which  he  has  endowed  the  part  he  played. 
In  real  life  the  comic  dramatist  managed  to  get  along  in 


218  MOLIERE 

society  without  friction;  the  social  bond  did  not  irk  him 
and  he  was  ready  enough  to  make  the  inevitable  com- 
promises it  imposed.  It  is  this  more  moderate  view  of 
life  which  he  causes  Philinte  to  express.  Moliere  had  no 
grudge  against  the  world  and  no  animosity  toward  it.  He 
had  no  cause  for  exacerbated  protest.  He  had  been  born 
in  a  well-to-do  household;  he  had  been  brought  up  in 
comfortable  circumstances;  he  had  scarcely  known  the 
youthful  bitterness  of  going  hungry;  he  had  got  into 
debt,  it  is  true,  but  he  had  got  out  again;  and  he  was  at 
last  prosperous  and  able  to  live  luxuriously.  Besides,  he 
was  successful  and  his  success  was  evident  to  all  men. 

Because  he  wrote  Alceste  for  his  own  acting  we  have 
no  right  to  declare  that  the  character  voices  his  own  opin- 
ions and  that  there  are  personal  reasons  for  the  diatribes 
of  the  hero.  That  he  put  something  of  himself  into  the 
protesting  Alceste  is  likely  enough,  just  as  he  certainly 
put  something  of  himself  into  Philinte,  the  Epicurean 
,  temporizer,  content  to  move  through  life  along  the  line 
of  least  resistance.  Every  artist  must  paint  himself;  and 
he  knows  others  and  is  able  to  project  them  into  indepen- 
dent life,  only  because  he  knows  himself.  But  the  jram- 
atist  is  a  true  dramatist  only  when  he  is  superior  to  mere 
lyric  self-betrayal  and  when  he  can  create  figures  foreign 
to  his  own  personality.  No  doubt  Moliere  looked  into 
his  own  heart  when  he  depicted  Alceste,  but  so  he  did 
when  he  drew  for  us  the  earlier  Arnolphe  and  the  later 
Argan,  in  the  'Malade  Imaginaire/ 

We  may  be  assured  that  he  who  had  no  quarrel  with 
existence,  who  was  no  anarchist  in  theory,  and  who  always 
accepted  the  social  order  as  he  found  it,  knew  very  well 
that  Alceste  took  life  too  hard  and  was  far  too  strenuous 
in  his  incessant  declamation.  We  may  be  certain  that  he 


THE  'MISANTHROPE'  219 

meant  the  independent  hero  of  his  comedy  to  be  impossible 
in  the  extravagance  of  his  demands  upon  others,  and  that 
he  expected  us  to  laugh  at  the  character  even  if  he  hoped 
that  we  might  also  like  Alceste  in  spite  of  his  frequent 
eccentricity.  We  need  not  doubt  that  Moliere  designed 
Alceste  rather  as  a  warning  than  as  an  example,  even  if 
he  also  used  the  character  as  the  mouthpiece  for  certain 
of  his  own  convictions. 

One  reason  why  so  many  of  his  critics  and  commenta- 
tors have  insisted  upon  identifying  him  more  often  with 
Alceste  than  with  any  other  of  his  creatures  is  their  belief 
that  the  relations  of  Moliere  to  his  wife  at  the  time  when 
this  comedy  was  composed  are  reflected  in  the  play.  Their 
contention  is  that  they  overhear  an  echo  of  Moliere's 
appeal  to  Armande  Bejart,  in  the  reproaches  Alceste 
(which  he  acted)  addresses  to  Celimene  (which  she  acted). 
But  this  is  sheer  assumption,  unsupported  by  the  facts; 
and  it  is  significant  that  certain  of  the  speeches  in  which 
Alceste  voices  his  despairing  jealousy  and  which  sound  as 
if  they  had  been  wrung  from  Moliere's  own  heart  at  this 
moment  of  anguish  when  he  and  his  wife  were  living  apart, 
were  not  written  originally  for  the  'Misanthrope'  but  for 
'Don  Garcie,'  produced  long  before  his  marriage.  This 
unsuccessful  play  had  never  been  published,  and  its  author 
held  himself  at  liberty  to  use  its  fragments  again  not  only 
in  the  'Misanthrope'  but  in  other  of  his  later  plays. 

Some  of  Moliere's  biographers  who  admit  that  Alceste 
is  not  Moliere  are  still  inclined  to  persist  that  Celimene 
is  Armande  Bejart,  because  her  husband  wrote  it  for  her 
acting,  fitting  it  to  her  accomplishment.  That  he  fitted 
it  to  her  accomplishment  is  undoubtedly  the  fact;  but 
there  is  no  warrant  for  the  belief  that  he  was  also  repro- 
ducing her  own  character.  He  wrote  Celimene  for  her 


220  MOLIERE 

to  act,  and  Celimene  is  a  young  flirt  quite  unworthy  of 
the  nobler  Alceste.  But  he  had  earlier  written  Elmire 
for  her  to  act,  and  Elmire  is  a  woman  of  irreproachable 
conduct.  That  the  actress  stood  as  a  model  for  the  char- 
acter entrusted  to  her  we  have  really  no  more  right  to 
assume  in  the  one  case  than  in  the  other.  Nothing  in 
Moliere's  career  leads  us  to  suppose  that  he  would  lay 
bare  his  own  life  on  the  stage  and  invite  the  sympathy  of 
the  public  for  his  private  misfortunes.  Indeed,  we  have 
every  reason  to  believe  that  this  is  what  he  would  never 
dream  of  doing,  since  it  would  be  an  act  absolutely  ab- 
horrent to  a  man  of  his  temperament.  Self-revelation 
of  this  kind  belongs  to  the  lyric,  not  to  the  drama;  and 
Moliere  had  little  in  common  with  Shelley.  Rather  is 
he  like  Lucretius,  who  kept  out  of  his  lofty  and  austere 
poem  every  fact  of  his  own  biography. 


VII 

Horace  Walpole  once  declared  that  "the^  world  is  a 
comedy  for  those  who  think  and  a  tragedy  for  those  who 
feel."  Moliere  was  a  thinker  who  felt  acutely;  and  in 
the  'Misanthrope'  his  emotion  is  almost  as  keen  as  his 
intellectual  endeavor,  with  the  result  that  his  comedy  has 
sometimes  seemed  almost  tragic  to  those  whose  own 
sensibility  is  unusually  delicate;  and  this  may  be  taken 
as  evidence  of  the  steady  development  of  his  genius.  He 
was,  and  he  remained,  to  the  end  of  his  life,  a  writer  of 
comedy,  but  he  was  now  putting  into  comedy  more  than 
French  comedy  had  ever  before  been  called  upon  to  carry. 
He  felt  the  attraction  of  subjects  not  comic  in  themselves, 
rather  serious  than  otherwise;  and  to  these  he  gave  a 
more  or  less  humorous  twist,  so  that  they  might  be  accept- 


THE  'MISANTHROPE'  221 

able  to  the  playgoers  of  Paris,  who  expected  him  to  make 
them  laugh  heartily. 

'Tartuffe'  is  comic  chiefly  because  of  the  unctuously 
humorous  character  of  Orgon  written  by  Moliere  for  his 
own  broad  acting,  as  if  he  dreaded  the  darkness  of  the 
central  figure  of  the  play,  which  appears  to  us  nowadays 
as  grim  almost  as  Shylock  (also  a  personage  in  a  comedy 
that  is  on  the  verge  of  tragedy).  'Don  Juan'  is  not  fairly 
to  be  described  as  a  comedy  within  any  reasonable  limita- 
tion of  the  word;  such  humorous  scenes  as  it  may  have 
are  almost  extraneous  to  its  straggling  story;  and  as  for 
Don  Juan  himself,  to  laugh  at  him  is  the  last  thing  any 
spectator  would  be  tempted  to  do.  And  the  third  of  the 
group,  the  'Misanthrope/  even  if  comic  in  intention  and 
in  execution,  is  not  comic  enough,  not  clearly  and  frankly 
humorous  enough,  to  provide  the  public  with  the  direct 
pleasure  proper  to  pure  comedy;  and  an  audience  follow- 
ing its  sequence  of  scenes  could  hardly  help  feeling  that 
it  was  seeing  a  play  transcending  the  strict  bounds  of 
the  comic.  Indeed,  this  comedy  has  almost  the  austere  J 
economy  and  the  stark  simplicity  of  a  tragedy  by  Racine. 
These  pieces  are,  all  three  of  them,  serious  in  theme,  not 
to  say  somber,  and  less  humorous  in  treatment  than  any 
of  Moliere's  earlier  efforts;  and  they  also  lack  the  cus- 
tomary conclusion.  The  'Misanthrope'  does  not  endpn  ( 
a  wedding;  'Don  Juan'  ends  with  its  hero's  going  down 
to  the  devil;  and  'Tartuffe'  terminates  with  the  marriage 
of  two  young  lovers  in  whose  ultimate  happiness  the  pub- 
lic takes  no  great  interest. 

In  all  three  of  these  plays  we  can  discover  their  author     / 
to  be  a  little  restless  within  the  form  that  was  imposed  on 
him  by  the  expectation  of  his  audience  who  demanded 
that  he  should  provide  them  with  material  for  mirth.     We 


222  MOLIERE 

can  see  him  stretching  the  formula  of  comedy  to  force 
it  to  contain  his  deeper  views  of  life.  He  was  feeling  his 
way  doubtfully  toward  a  framework  more  adequate  for 
the  full  expression  of  his  maturer  thought.  It  was  not 
that  he  was  ready  to  forego  comedy  or  that  he  was  out- 
growing it,  but  that  he  needed  more  room  for  his  larger 
message. 

This  new  formula,  which  without  ceasing  to  be  comedy 
should  yet  be  more  comprehensive  than  comedy  had 
ever  been  before,  he  most  nearly  attained  in  'Tartuffe/ 
Whether  he  might  not  have  achieved  it  completely  to  his 
own  satisfaction  if  his  life  had  extended  to  the  full  three- 
score years  and  ten — this  we  cannot  do  more  than  guess. 
As  it  was,  his  career  was  cut  short  when  he  had  only  a 
little  more  than  completed  his  half-century,  and  when 
he  was  still  in  the  full  ardor  of  production.  Perhaps  if 
he  had  survived  another  ten  years  he  might  have  been 
able  to  carry  with  him  the  laughter-loving  playgoers  of 
Paris  and  to  persuade  them  to  let  him  interest  them  in 
plays  that  did  not  have  to  pretend  to  be  comedies  and 
that  might  even  at  times  have  taken  on  an  aspect  almost 
tragic. 

It  is,  of  course,  idle  to  speculate  what  this  new  formula 
might  have  been.  Perhaps  Moliere  would  have  antici- 
pated the  grave  comedy  of  Lessing  and  the  social  drama 
of  Augier  and  Dumas.  As  it  is,  we  can  see  that  the 
formula  of  Lessing,  which  is  the  formula  of  Augier  and 
Dumas  also,  is  only  an  extension  of  the  formula  of 
Moliere  in  'Tartuffe'  and  in  the  'Misanthrope/  more 
completely  satisfactory  in  the  former,  but  perhaps  of  a 
more  assured  promise  in  the  latter. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

FROM  THE  'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUF  TO  'GEORGE 

DANDIN' 

I 

AFTER  the  strenuous  effort  of  composing  'Tartuffe/ 
'Don  Juan/  and  the  'Misanthrope/  in  which  he  had  risen 
higher  and  revealed  himself  more  amply  than  in  any  of 
his  earlier  plays,  Moliere  relaxed  his  tension  and  brought 
out  in  swift  succession  a  series  of  lighter  and  easier  pieces, 
full  of  fun  and  lacking  in  the  loftier  purpose  visible  in  the 
three  masterpieces  of  which  one  was  still  under  the  royal 
interdiction,  while  the  second  had  been  cut  short  before 
its  full  career  had  been  run,  and  the  third,  highly  acclaimed 
as  it  had  been,  had  proved  less  pleasing  to  the  public  than 
its  author  had  expected. 

The  slighter  plays  which  immediately  followed  the 
'Misanthrope'  were  less  elevated,  but  more  likely  to  give 
pleasure  to  the  ordinary  playgoer;  and  for  a  little  while 
Moliere  was  content  to  curb  his  more  exalted  ambitions 
and  to  put  together  plots  intended  primarily  to  provoke 
hearty  laughter.  He  was  not  only  a  dramatic  poet,  he 
was  also  both  an  ingenious  playwright  and  an  alert  theatri- 
cal manager.  He  acknowledged  the  duty  of  keeping  his 
fellow-actors  constantly  supplied  with  the  kind  of  piece 
which  had  an  approved  popularity.  After  indulging  his 
own  aspirations  in  the  'Misanthrope'  he  returned  once 

223 


224  MOLIERE 

more  to  the  simpler  form  of  the  comedy-of-masks,  con- 
veying no  large  message,  but  certain  to  attract  the  main 
body  of  playgoers  who  delighted  in  frankly  farcical  im- 
broglios. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  it  irked  Moliere 
to  prepare  these  humbler  pieces.  He  might  be  a  keen 
observer  of  the  society  of  his  time  and  he  might  be  moved 
to  satirize  its  affectations  and  its  extravagances;  but  he 
was  also  a  humorist,  with  the  gift  of  rich  fun  and  with  a 
relish  for  bold  buffoonery.  The  farce  which  almost  raised 
itself  up  to  the  level  of  comedy  or  the  comedy  which  some- 
times sank  to  the  level  of  farce — this  was  a  dramatic  form 
in  which  Moliere  was  absolutely  at  ease.  In  this  he  was 
an  acknowledged  master;  and  we  have  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  the  plays  of  this  unpretending  class  were  written 
against  the  grain.  Indeed,  there  is  in  all  of  them  a  hearty 
freedom,  an  ingenuity  of  invention,  a  felicity  of  episode, 
a  varied  coloring  of  character,  a  full  flow  of  animal  spirits, 
which  must  be  accepted  as  evidence  that  Moliere  really 
enjoyed  composing  them,  even  if  he  knew  them  to  be  less 
important  than  theilarger  comedies  of  a  loftier  type. 

And  here — in  the  fact  that  Moliere  was  the  manager 
of  a  company  of  actors  who  depended  upon  him  to  keep 
them  constantly  supplied  with  plays  likely  to  attract  the 
public — can  we  find  the  explanation  of  the  inequality  of 
aim  and  of  tone  which  cannot  fail  to  impress  any  one 
who  considers  carefully  the  chronological  sequence  of  his 
plays.  Beginning  with  brilliant  farces  which  displayed 
only  his  dramaturgic  dexterity  and  his  command  of 
laug/iter,  he  rose  slowly  above  these  more  or  less  primitive 
plays  with  more  or  less  external  humor  until  he  was  able 
to  utilize  his  acquired  skill  to  set  on  the  stage  comedies 
with  an  underlying  thesis,  the  'Ecole  des  Maris'  and  the 


'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUI'  225 

'Ecole  des  Femmes.'  After  he  had  attained  to  the  high 
seriousness  of  'Tartuffe'  and  of  the  'Misanthrope/  he 
returned  again  and  again  in  the  later  years  of  his  life  to 
the  earlier  and  more  farcical  type,  which  he  might  be 
supposed  to  have  outgrown,  but  which  we  recognize  once 
more  in  the  'Medecin  malgre  lui'  and  in  the  'Fourberies 
de  Scapin/ 

If  we  had  no  more  definitely  ascertained  chronology 
for  Moliere  than  we  have  for  Shakspere,  if  we  were  without 
the  exact  dates  and  were  compelled  to  arrange  his  plays 
by  the  aid  of  internal  evidence  only,  by  the  degree  of 
maturity  they  severally  reveal,  we  should  unhesitatingly 
credit  the  'Medecin  malgre  lui'  and  the  'Fourberies  de 
Scapin'  to  an  early  period  of  his  development  as  a  drama- 
tist, reserving  the  more  austere  'Misanthrope'  to  the  last 
years  of  his  brief  career.  We  could  scarcely  help  assum- 
ing that  all  the  farces  must  have  preceded  the  riper  and 
deeper  comedies  in  five  acts.  We  might  be  justified  in 
projecting  the  line  of  his  progress  as  a  steadily  ascending 
curve.  But  by  good  fortune  we  are  in  possession  of  the 
precise  dates  when  almost  every  one  of  his  plays  was 
originally  performed;  and  we  can  now  perceive  that  the 
curve  of  his  actual  advance  is  very  different  from  that  we 
should  have  drawn  hypothetically  had  these  facts  failed  us. 
We  can  see  that  even  if  this  line  rises  steadily,  its  ascent 
is  interrupted  again  and  again  by  a  sudden  descent  to  a 
level  only  a  little  above  that  attained  very  soon  after  his 
earlier  successes  in  Paris.  The  dates  as  we  have  them 
contradict  what  would  be  perfectly  justifiable  inferences 
if  we  had  to  rely  solely  on  conjecture. 

And  perhaps  this  possible  blunder  may  serve  as  a  cau- 
tion to  the  students  of  English  literature  who  have  ventured 
to  arrange  Shakspere's  plays  in  a  chronological  table 


226  MOLIERE 

supported  mainly  by  internal  evidence,  the  result  of  an 
attempt  to  trace  the  growing  maturity  of  Shakspere's 
art  as  a  playwright,  as  a  poet  and  as  a  philosopher.  Per- 
haps the  precise  dates,  if  we  ever  shall  possess  them, 
will  upset  this  arbitrary  Shaksperean  chronology  as  com- 
pletely as  the  facts  would  overturn  any  similar  Molierean 
chronology  founded  upon  any  similar  hypothesis. 


II 

The  earliest  of  these  later  unpretending  pieces  was  the 
'Medecin  malgre  lui,'  a  comedy  in  prose  in  three  acts, 
brought  out  at  the  Palais-Royal  on  August  sixth,  1666, 
only  two  months  after  the  original  performance  of  the 
1  Misanthrope/  It  seems  to  be  an  elaborate  reworking 
of  an  earlier  farce,  entitled  the  '  Fagotier/  which  had  prob- 
ably been  composed  by  Moliere  during  his  provincial 
strollings,  about  the  time  when  he  devised  the  two  other 
farces  that  happen  to  have  survived.  It  retains  the  sim- 
plicity of  plot  possible  and  proper  in  a  farcical  play  which 
aims  at  nothing  more  than  a  rapid  succession  of  laugh- 
ter-provoking episodes.  Its  set  is  probably  that  of  the 
comedy-of-masks,  the  open  square  with  the  dwelling  of 
the  heroine's  father  on  one  side  or  the  other.  Its  char- 
acters are  the  profile  figures  of  the  Italian  improvised 
play;  and  the  chief  of  these  characters,  written  by  the  au- 
thor for  his  own  acting,  is  Sganarelle  once  more,  a  Sgan- 
arelle  who  is  cunning  and  improvident,  and  who  differs 
not  a  little  from  the  other  Sganarelles  that  Moliere  had 
impersonated  in  one  or  another  of  his  preceding  pieces. 

This  time  Sganarelle  is  a  woodcutter,  who  has  had  the 
rudiments  of  an  education,  who  was  once  the  servant  of 
a  physician  and  who  is  now  so  dissipated  that  his  wife  is 


'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUF  227 

constantly  reproaching  him.  Her  taunts  are  so  acute 
that  he  is  provoked  into  giving  her  a  thrashing,  for  which 
she  resolves  on  vengeance.  It  happens  that  one  Geronte 
has  a  daughter  Lucinde  (played  by  Moliere's  wife)  who 
is  in  love  with  Leandre  (played  by  La  Grange).  To 
avoid  marrying  a  husband  chosen  by  her  father  she  pre- 
tends to  be  dumb,  and,  naturally  enough,  no  one  of  the 
doctors  has  been  able  to  cure  her  pretended  affliction. 
Geronte  sends  two  servants  to  seek  out  some  other  phy- 
sician; and  Sganarelle's  wife  seizes  the  opportunity  to 
get  even  with  her  husband.  She  tells  Geronte's  servants 
that  Sganarelle  is  really  a  marvelous  physician,  having 
wrought  incredible  cures;  but  that  he  is  very  eccentric 
and  will  not  admit  that  he  is  a  learned  doctor  until  he  has 
been  soundly  beaten.  So  the  servants  beat  Sganarelle 
until  he  acknowledges  himself  a  physician.  He  is  taken 
to  Geronte  and  he  examines  Lucinde,  parodying  the 
manners  and  usages  of  the  contemporary  practitioners  of 
medicine.  Leandre  at  last  bribes  him  and  he  introduces 
the  suitor  to  Geronte  as  his  own  apothecary  assistant.  He 
distracts  the  father's  attention  while  his  companion  gets 
into  conversation  with  the  daughter.  He  restores  Lucinde 
to  speech;  and  she  immediately  displays  an  extraordinary 
volubility.  Finally,  Leandre  and  Lucinde  start  to  elope, 
but  they  return  at  once  with  the  news  that  Leandre  is 
now  the  heir  of  his  rich  uncle,  who  has  kindly  died  in  the 
nick  of  time.  So  all  ends  happily;  Sganarelle  forgives 
his  wife  and  determines  to  remain  a  physician,  since  the 
profession  is  easy  and  profitable  and  safe. 

Upon  this  slight  framework  Moliere  has  embroidered 
the  most  spontaneous  and  exuberant  fun.  The  laughter 
that  greets  the  successive  incidents  is  irresistible  and  in- 
cessant. The  play  achieved  its  immediate  purpose  of 


228  MOLIERE 

attracting  paying  audiences  to  the  Palais-Royal;    ; 
popularity  has  survived   to   the   present  day.     Th 
no  denying  that  it  is  not  a  comedy  in  the  higher 
of  the  word,  it  is  essentially  a  farce;    but  scarcely 
other  of  its  author's  broader  pieces  is  more  boldly  mi 
1  provoking.     It  has  a  Rabelaisian  sweep  of  humor  . 
a   Rabelaisian  freedom  of  phrase.     The  spectators   :r. 
caught  by  the  contagion  of  its  wholesome  fun,  whit,} 
exists  for  its  own  sake  only  and  not  for  any  ulterior  pui 
pose — except  in  so  far  as  occasion  serves  to  satirize  th 
pompous  pretenses  of  the  practitioners  of  medicine.     Th- 
'Medecin  malgre  lui'  is  almost  a  comedy,  because  its 
simple  story  sustains  a  series  of  simple  episodes,  each  of 
them  funnier  than  its  predecessors  and  each  of  them  dis- 
closing another  aspect  of  Moliere's  comic  force.     It  is 
almost  a  comedy,  because  its  characters,  fantastic  as  they 
are  and  extreme  in  their  exaggeration,  have  an  unexpected 
and  indescribable  veracity;    their  extravagance   has   its 
roots  in  truth.     It  is  almost  a  comedy,  again,  because 
of  the   literary  quality  of  its   dialogue,  fresh,  vigorous, 
and  unfailingly  felicitous.     Farce  as  it  is,  no  comedy  of 
Moliere's  has  put  into  circulation  more  quotable  phrases. 
The  'Medecin  malgre  lui'   was  devised  to  please  the 
burghers  of  Paris,  who  cherished   the  tradition  of  the 
earlier  French  farce  and  who  relished  the  flavor  of  Gallic 
salt.     They  had  ar  hearty  liking  for  broad  fun  and  they 
were  not  unduly  squeamish  over  its  breadth.     They  did 
not  object   to   this   little   play  because  it  had  an  occa- 
sional streak  of  earthiness,  such  as  we  discover  often  in 
Rabelais,  sometimes  in  Montaigne,  and  now  and  again 
in   Shakspere    also.     To  say  this  is  to  suggest  that  it 
was  not  a  play  likely  to  find  favor  with  the  precieuses  or 
with  the  puritans. 


'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUI'  229 

:i 

13  HI 

bliere's  next  pieces  were  composed  for  a  more  delicate 
'ence,  for  those  whom  the  king  invited  to  another  of 
'  'splendid  spectacles,  and  we  can  note  in  them  a  falling 
'in  spontaneous  humor.     Indeed,  two  of  them  may  be 
'^missed   summarily,   as   productions  written   to  order, 
ud  devoid  of  the  qualities  which  have  given  Moliere  his 
Isting  fame.     La  Grange  records  in  his  register  that,  by 
ne  command  of  the  king,  the  whole  company  left  Paris 
•in  the  first  of  December,   1666,  for  Saint-Germain,  re- 
maining there  until  the  twentieth  of  February,  1667,  more 
than  two  months  and  a  half.     They  were  summoned  to 
take  part  in  an  interminable  entertainment  which  was 
entitled  the  'Ballet  of  the  Muses'  and  into  which  various 
plays  were  to  be  intercalated.     Three  of  these  pieces  were 
from  the  pen  of  Moliere. 

Two  of  these  three  were  prepared  merely  to  oblige  the 
sovereign,  and  are  of  very  little  importance.  The  first  of 
them  was  a  "heroic  pastoral  comedy"  called  'Melicerte/ 
acted  in  December,  1666.  The  invention  of  Moliere  was 
equal  to  any  task  Louis  XIV  might  impose  upon  it;  but  a 
heroic  pastoral  comedy  was  not  the  kind  of  play  in  which 
his  genius  was  likely  to  display  itself  advantageously. 
The  pastoral  at  its  best  is  a  wholly  artificial  form,  with 
which  the  author  of  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules'  could  have 
little  sympathy.  And  there  is  no  reason  for  surprise  or 
for  regret  when  we  find  that  he  wrote  only  two  acts  of 
this  chilly  comedy  with  its  conventional  atmosphere, 
with  its  impossible  shepherds  and  shepherdesses,  and 
with  its  remoteness  from  all  the  realities  of  life.  It  was 
never  completed;  nor  was  it  ever  acted  in  Paris.  It  was 
not  published  by  Moliere  himself;  and  it  did  not  appear 


230  MOLIERE 

in  print  until  nine  years  after  his  death,  in  the  complete 
edition  of  his  works  issued  by  the  loyal  La  Grange.  In 
that  edition  the  two  acts  actually  written  are  followed 
by  a  note  declaring  that  the  comedy  had  never  been 
finished,  and  that  as  the  king  had  been  satisfied  with  the 
performance  of  the  two  acts  at  the  festivity  for  which  it 
had  been  commanded,  its  author  had  not  cared  to  carry 
it  further.  Long  after  Moliere' s  death  and  long  after  his 
widow  had  remarried,  her  son  by  her  second  husband  was 
moved  to  complete  the  play  as  best  he  could. 

Little  as  the  author  seems  to  have  cared  for  'Melicerte,' 
he  cared  even  less  for  the  second  piece  prepared  for  the 
same  royal  festivity.  This  was  the  'Pastorale  Comique/ 
performed  before  the  king  on  January  fifth,  1667.  This 
was  never  published,  and  Moliere  apparently  did  not  even 
preserve  the  manuscript.  We  can  recover  an  outline  of 
the  plot,  and  a  few  fragments  of  the  dialogue  from  con- 
temporary records  of  the  royal  entertainment.  Probably 
the  little  trifle  was  ingeniously  adjusted  to  the  circum- 
stances of  its  performance,  and  probably  also  there  were 
not  a  few  strokes  of  humor  in  the  part  which  Moliere 
wrote  for  himself,  even  if  the  scheme  afforded  him  little 
opportunity  to  put  forth  his  full  strength. 

IV 

But  a  third  play,  the  'Sicilien,'  was  also  performed 
before  the  king,  as  a  part  of  the  '  Ballet  of  the  Muses/  in 
February,  1667,  and  this  was  a  more  spontaneous  effort 
of  Moliere' s  genius.  It  is  a  comedy-ballet  in  one  act  and 
in  prose.  It  is  a  charming  little  piece,  light  and  lively, 
an  anticipation  of  modern  opera-comique  (perhaps  the 
most  characteristically  French  of  all  the  various  forms  of 


'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUI'  231 

the  drama).  The  theme  lends  itself  to  a  lyric  treatment; 
and  in  the  past  century  it  tempted  more  than  one  com- 
poser. The  prose  of  the  dialogue  contains  not  a  few 
blank  verse  lines,  as  though  the  poet  were  already  experi- 
menting for  the  free  rhythms  of  the  later  'Amphitryon/ 
We  can  perceive  in  the  'Sicilien'  an  anticipation  of  Mari- 
vaux  and  of  Beaumarchais;  it  has  the  ingenuous  grace 
of  the  one  and  the  ingenious  briskness  of  the  other.  It 
has  a  spring-like  sympathy  with  the  young  lovers  and  a 
faint  flavor  of  eternal  romance,  wholly  uncontaminated 
with  more  exalted  romanticism. 

The  scene  is  laid  in  Sicily.  The  action  is  simplicity 
itself,  and  yet  it  affords  opportunity  for  comic  acting. 
There  are  two  characters  that  Moliere  might  have  played 
himself:  one  is  Hali,  a  resourceful  intriguing  valet,  hav- 
ing many  traits  in  common  with  Mascarille;  the  other  is 
Don  Pedro,  an  elderly  man  of  a  jealous  temperament, 
not  unlike  the  Sganarelle  of  the  'Ecole  des  Maris/  but 
more  dignified  in  his  deportment.  It  was  this  latter 
character  that  the  author  chose  for  his  own  acting,  per- 
haps because  he  liked  to  impersonate  a  jealous  man  and 
perhaps  because  he  knew  that  the  victim  always  affords 
an  ampler  histrionic  opportunity  than  the  intriguer. 

Isidore  is  a  beautiful  Greek  slave  who  is  beloved  by  Don 
Pedro  and  by  him  guarded  with  jealous  care.  Adraste  is 
an  ardent  young  Frenchman  who  has  caught  sight  of 
Isidore  and  who  wants  to  marry  her.  He  is  aided  and 
abetted  by  his  servant  Hali.  The  lover  serenades  the 
heroine;  he  sends  Hali  and  several  musicians  to  sing  and 
dance  before  her — and  incidentally  to  declare  his  passion 
to  her.  Then  he  substitutes  himself  for  the  artist  who 
was  engaged  to  paint  her  portrait;  and  while  he  is  em- 
ployed in  this  agreeable  duty,  Hali,  well  disguised,  sue- 


232  MOLIERE 

ceeds  in  distracting  the  attention  of  Don  Pedro  long 
enough  to  allow  the  hero  and  the  heroine  to  come  to  an 
understanding.  Finally  Climene,  the  sister  of  Adraste, 
is  enlisted  in  his  aid.  Heavily  veiled,  she  rushes  to  Don 
Pedro  and  claims  his  protection  from  her  husband,  who 
is  ill-treating  her.  Don  Pedro  promises  her  shelter;  and 
when  Adraste  comes  on  as  the  abusive  husband,  Don 
Pedro  seeks  to  reconcile  them.  Adraste  allows  himself 
to  be  converted;  and  Don  Pedro  informs  Climene  that 
she  can  now  return  to  her  husband,  who  has  promised  to 
treat  her  kindly  in  the  future.  She  retires  into  the  house 
to  get  her  veil;  and  it  is  the  muffled  Isidore  whom  Adraste 
bears  away  under  the  eyes  of  her  jealous  guardian.  A 
little  later,  when  Climene  herself  comes  forth  Don  Pedro 
awakes  to  the  fact  that  he  has  been  befooled  and  appeals 
for  justice  to  a  Senator,  who  will  not  listen  to  him,  as  he 
has  just  devised  a  Moorish  dance  for  a  troop  of  masquer- 
aders.  And  this  little  dance  brings  the  little  piece  to  its 
appropriate  end,  the  deceived  Don  Pedro  finding  no 
redress. 

The  'Sicilien'  was  acted  before  the  king  and  the  court 
in  midwinter;  but  it  was  not  brought  out  before  the 
burghers  of  Paris  until  early  in  the  summer.  The  rea- 
son for  this  delay  was  undoubtedly  Moliere's  precarious 
health.  The  company  reopened  the  Palais-Royal  toward 
the  end  of  February;  and  early  in  March,  the  first  per- 
formance of  Corneille's  'Attila'  took  place,  a  tragedy  in 
which  Moliere  did  not  appear.  At  the  end  of  March  the 
Palais-Royal  closed  for  the  usual  Easter  recess;  but  it 
remained  shut  for  an  unusual  time,  because  Moliere  was 
not  then  well  enough  to  act.  In  April  there  was  even  a 
rumor  that  he  was  dying;  his  chest  was  weak  and  his 
digestion  was  out  of  order.  He  found  relief  by  putting 


'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUI'  233 

himself  on  a  milk  diet.  In  June  he  had  recovered  suf- 
ficiently to  reappear;  and  the  'Sicilien'  was  at  last  pre- 
sented to  the  Parisians  with  its  entertaining  interludes  of 
song  and  dance. 

It  was  two  months  later,  while  the  king  was  away  in 
the  Low  Countries  with  his  invading  army,  that  Moliere 
believed  himself  authorized  at  last  to  bring  out  'Tartuffe'; 
it  was  promptly  interdicted  after  a  single  performance. 
Moliere  immediately  sent  two  actors  to  bear  his  protest 
to  Louis  XIV,  a  journey  which  cost  the  company  a  thou- 
sand livres  and  which  necessitated  the  closing  of  the  the- 
ater for  seven  weeks.  What  with  the  failure  of  'Attila,' 
the  expenses  of  La  Grange's  trip,  the  suspension  of  the 
performances  caused  by  this  and  by  Moliere's  frequent 
illnesses,  the  company  had  a  lean  year.  Luckily  for  its 
members,  the  king  had  been  so  well  satisfied  with  their 
share  in  the  'Ballet  of  the  Muses'  at  Saint-Germain  that 
he  had  given  them  twice  the  annual  pension,  a  sum  of 
twelve  thousand  livres,  which  served  to  ca'rry  them  safely 
over  this  time  of  dearth. 


It  was  perhaps  because  of  his  broken  health  and  per- 
haps because  of  the  discouragement  due  to  the  new  in- 
terdiction of  'TartufFe'  that  Moliere  allowed  nearly  a 
year  to  elapse  before  he  brought  out  his  next  play.  And 
it  was  perhaps  because  the  financial  result  of  his  labors 
during  the  preceding  months  had  not  been  altogether 
satisfactory  that  he  selected  a  plot  of  an  assured  popular- 
ity, calling  for  spectacular  accompaniment — the  intrigue 
of  Jupiter  with  Alcmena,  the  chaste  wife  of  Amphi- 
tryon, a  subject  already  successfully  treated  in  French 
by  Rotrou,  in  his  comedy  called  the  'Deux  Sosies.' 


234  MOLIERE 

Rotrou's  rather  original  adaptation  from  Plautus  had 
owed  much  of  its  attractiveness  to  various  mechanical 
devices  such  as  the  playgoing  public  heartily  appreciated. 
The  drama,  while  it  may  aspire  to  the  highest  peaks  of 
poetry,  is  always  and  of  necessity  closely  connected  with 
the  "show-business";  and  every  true  dramatic  poet  has 
kept  in  mind  the  need  for  pleasing  the  eyes  of  the  specta- 
tors as  well  as  the  ears  of  the  audience.  Shakspere,  for 
example,  with  his  frequent  ghosts,  his  combats,  his  bat- 
tles and  his  processions,  is  as  frankly  spectacular  as  the 
meager  resources  of  the  Tudor  theater  would  permit. 

In  taking  over  the  plot  of  Rotrou's  adaptation  Moliere 
profited  also  by  his  own  study  of  the  original  play  by 
Plautus — if  that  can  fairly  be  called  original  which  was 
in  its  turn  an  imitation  of  the  Greek.  In  view  of  Moliere' s 
habit  of  levying  contributions  on  the  Spanish  playwrights, 
on  the  Italian  devisers  of  the  comedy-of-masks,  and  on 
the  forgotten  authors  of  the  old  French  farces,  it  may  be 
matter  for  wonder  that  he  had  not  earlier  had  recourse 
to  the  Latin  dramatists,  whose  plays  he  had  studied  at 
the  College  de  Clermont.  For  his  'Ecole  des  Maris' 
he  had  borrowed  a  hint  or  two  from  Terence;  and  a  line 
of  La  Grange's  brief  biographical  sketch  seems  to  imply 
that  in  his  boyhood,  when  he  was  studying  under  the 
Jesuits,  Moliere  had  preferred  Terence  to  Plautus.  This 
preference  may  have  been  due  to  the  influence  of  his  in- 
structors, over-enamored  of  external  elegancies  of  style, 
or  it  may  have  been  the  result  of  Moliere's  own  school- 
boy ignorance  of  the  stage,  which  would  then  veil  from 
him  the  fact  that  Terence  is  essentially  a  stylist,  a  pol- 
ished man  of  letters  rather  than  a  practical  man  of  the 
theater.  Moliere's  later  experience  must  have  disclosed 
to  him  that  Plautus  is  a  born  playwright,  a  realistic 


'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUI'  235 

humorist,  able  to  present  comic  characters  entangled  in 
comic  situations. 

Whatever  Moliere's  opinions  might  be  as  to  the  relative 
merits  of  the  two  Roman  dramatists,  it  was  to  Plautus, 
in  the  original  and  as  adapted  by  Rotrou,  that  he  turned 
for  the  material  of  his  next  play,  the  'Amphitryon/  a 
comedy  in  three  acts,  produced  at  the  Palais-Royal  in 
January,  1668,  and  repeated  before  the  king  within  a 
few  days. 

With  the  myth  of  Jupiter's  love  for  the  beautiful  wife 
of  a  Greek  general  and  with  the  unworthy  trick  through 
which  the  lustful  god  deceived  her  by  assuming  the  likeness 
of  her  husband — with  this  legendary  matter  the  earlier 
Attic  dramatists  had  dealt  tragically.  Later  Greek  play- 
wrights had  preferred  to  consider  rather  its  more  humorous 
aspects,  and  in  this  they  had  been  followed  by  Plautus, 
who  pretended  to  wonder  just  what  kind  of  play  it  was 
he  had  written.  As  it  contained  a  god  and  a  prince  it 
could  not  be  a  comedy  (according  to  the  critical  code  which 
the  Latins  had  taken  over  from  the  Greeks);  and  as  it 
contained  a  slave  it  could  not  be  a  tragedy.  Plautus 
therefore  suggested  that  his  medley  might  be  a  tragi- 
comedy, a  term  before  unknown.  The  Latin  dramatist 
was  restrained  by  traditional  regard  for  the  god,  even 
while  representing  one  of  this  deity's  least  reputable 
amorous  adventures.  In  dealing  with  a  theme  of  this 
doubtful  propriety  Moliere  undertook  a  task  of  obvious 
difficulty.  To  make  such  a  subject  acceptable  or  even 
tolerable  to  an  audience,  who  did  not  believe  in  the  myth 
and  who  could  have  no  sympathy  with  Jupiter's  misdeed, 
demanded  a  very  light  hand  and  the  utmost  certainty  of 
touch.  It  called  not  only  for  skill,  but  even  more  for 
tact  and  taste. 


236  MOLIERE 

How  dangerous  the  story  is  and  how  disgusting  it  might 
be,  we  discover  when  we  consider  the  result  when  Dryden 
undertook  it.  With  all  his  wit  and  with  all  his  imagi- 
nation, Dryden  was  not  a  comic  playwright  by  native  gift; 
and  most  of  his  attempts  at  comedy  seem  to  have  been 
done  against  his  genius.  In  none  of  them,  full-flavored 
as  most  of  them  are,  does  he  surrender  more  subser- 
viently to  the  depravity  of  Restoration  audiences  than 
he  did  when  he  wrote  his  'Amphitryon.'  He  drew  on 
Moliere  as  well  as  on  Plautus;  but  he  did  not  imitate  the 
dexterity  of  his  Parisian  contemporary  (from  whom  he 
had  already  borrowed  his  'Sir  Martin  Marall,'  a  free 
rendering  of  the  'Etourdi').  It  is  sad  to  see  how  Dryden 
sinks  in  the  mire  where  Moliere  steps  lightly  and  easily. 
As  Scott  said — and  he  was  an  ardent  admirer  of  both  poets 
— Dryden  is  coarse  and  vulgar  where  Moliere  is  witty,  and 
"where  the  Frenchman  ventures  upon  a  double  meaning 
the  Englishman  always  contrives  to  make  it  a  single  one." 

Indeed,  nothing  reveals  more  clearly  the  cleanminded- 
ness  of  Moliere,  in  spite  of  his  breadth  of  humor,  than 
the  delicacy  with  which  he  here  deals  with  a  situation 
undisguisedly  indelicate  in  itself,  and  the  adroitness  with 
which  he  robs  a  gross  situation  of  most  of  its  offensive- 
ness.  His  treatment  of  the  theme  is  not  austere,  of  course; 
it  is  unfailingly  playful;  it  gets  all  possible  fun  out  of 
the  situation;  but  it  is  never  libidinous;  and  it  is  never 
colored  with  any  extenuation  of  the  mean  trick  which 
Jupiter  is  playing  on  an  honest  woman.  And  occasion 
serves  to  note  that  Moliere,  often  as  he  put  a  jealous  man 
on  the  stage,  has  never  presented  even  one  woman  who 
has  broken  her  marriage  vows;  the  wife  of  Amphitryon 
is  innocent  in  intent,  and  the  wife  of  George  Dandin  is 
still  innocent  in  fact. 


'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUI'  237 

Where  Dryden  used  a  sturdy  blank  verse  and  a  blunt 
prose  for  his  setting  forth  on  the  stage  of  this  story  which 
ought  to  be  treated  poetically  and  romantically,  Moliere, 
with  a  finer  instinct  for  a  remote  and  airy  legend, 
far  removed  from  the  realities  of  life,  told  it  lyrically  in 
irregular  verses  that  often  link  themselves  in  stanzas. 
He  was  not  naturally  lyric,  which  is  a  mood  the  dramatist 
may  rarely  need.  But  he  was  a  consummate  artist,  with 
an  intuitive  feeling  for  the  fit  form.  Moreover,  he  had 
long  been  a  close  friend  of  La  Fontaine,  whose  'Contes' 
had  been  published  in  1666,  to  be  followed  by  his  'Fables' 
in  1668,  only  a  month  after  'Amphitryon'  was  acted. 
Intimate  as  he  was  with  the  fabulist  it  is  probable  that 
they  had  often  discussed  the  metrical  novelties  of  La 
Fontaine's  verse  as  disclosed  in  the  'Contes'  and  the 
'Fables/  its  artful  variety  and  its  unfailingly  graceful 
ease;  and  it  is  evidence  of  Moliere's  exceeding  cleverness 
and  of  his  mastery  of  verse  that  although  he  had  never 
before  adventured  himself  on  the  lyric  elevation  where 
his  friend  was  wont  to  wander  at  will,  now  that  he  heard 
the  imperative  call  he  proved  himself  capable  of  the 
ascent.  Only  in  'Amphitryon/  and  again  a  little  later 
in  '  Psyche/  did  he  care  to  lift  himself  to  this  lyric  plane. 
But  in  these  two  pieces  he  displayed  his  possession  of  a 
lyric  faculty  not  visible  in  any  other  of  his  works — a 
faculty  scarcely  inferior  to  La  Fontaine's.  The  sensual 
ardor  of  Jupiter  is  expressed  to  Alcmena  in  lines  that 
glow  with  passion  even  though  the  words  belong  to  the 
outworn  vocabulary  of  Louis  XIV  gallantry,  which  we 
now  find  rather  unconvincing  even  in  the  more  ardent 
passages  of  Corneille  and  Racine. 

However  inferior  in  the  expansion  of  his  lyricism 
Moliere  may  be  to  La  Fontaine  and  to  Aristophanes,  the 


238  MOLIERE 

chief  other  lyrists  who  are  humorists  also,  he  is  superior 
to  them  in  his  humor,  which  is  richer  than  that  of  La 
Fontaine  and  finer  than  that  of  Aristophanes.  And  in 
few  of  his  comedies  is  his  humor  both  richer  and  finer 
than  in  the  'Amphitryon/  He  gets  more  fun  out  of  the 
assumption  by  Mercury  (who  is  Jupiter's  servant)  of  the 
personality  of  Sosia  (who  is  Amphitryon's  servant)  than 
Shakspere  extracts  from  the  likeness  of  the  two  Dromios. 
There  is  no  scene  in  the  'Comedy  of  Errors,'  the  farce  in 
which  Shakspere  first  displayed  his  deliberate  playmaking 
skill,  as  subtle  or  as  laughter-provoking  as  that  in  which 
Mercury,  insisting  that  he  is  Sosia,  shatters  the  real  Sosia's 
belief  in  his  own  identity — a  scene  made  possible  only 
by  its  author's  thorough  training  in  philosophy.  Indeed, 
in  the  whole  range  of  the  comic  drama  there  are  very  few 
scenes  of  a  more  consummate  craftsmanship  and  of  a 
more  overpowering  humor  than  this,  in  which  Mercury 
maliciously  enjoys  the  bewilderment  of  Sosia  when  forced 
to  deny  himself  and  then  to  wonder  who  he  is  if  he  is 
not  Sosia.  And  originally  Moliere  himself  impersonated 
Sosia. 

A  part  of  the  contemporary  popularity  of  the  'Am- 
phitryon* was  due  to  its  mechanical  devices.  In  the  pro- 
logue Mercury  descended  from  a  cloud  and  held  colloquy 
with  Night,  who  had  halted  her  chariot  in  mid  air;  and 
at  the  end  of  the  play  Jupiter  was  wafted  up  to  the  sky 
in  another  cloud. 

VI 

Moliere's  next  play  was  a  comedy,  'George  Dandin,' 
produced  at  the  Palais-Royal  in  November,  1668,  but 
earlier  presented  before  the  king  in  the  gardens  of  Ver- 
sailles in  July  in  a  theater  of  foliage  adorned  with  foun- 


'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUF  239 

tains  and  artfully  arranged  for  the  sudden  transforma- 
tions called  for  by  the  story  of  the  ballet  which  surrounded 
the  performance  of  the  comic  play. 

As  if  in  contrast  with  the  magnificence  of  its  original 
representation,  'George  Dandin'  itself  is  a  piece  with 
a  very  simple  story,  elaborated  from  one  of  its  author's 
earlier  farces.  Moved  by  a  misplaced  ambition  which 
we  should  now  call  snobbishness,  a.  wealthy  peasant, 
George  Dandin  (played  by  Moliere  himself)  hjis  married 
Angelique  (played  by  Moliere's  wife)  because  she  was  of 
noble  blood.  He  has  dealt  directly  with  her  parents, 
Monsieur  and  Madame  de  Sottenville,  whose  debts  he 
has  to  pay  and  who  treat  him  with  condescending  con- 
tjrnpt.  He  never  consulted  Angelique  herself,  and  there- 
fore she  feels  free  to  seek  her  own  pleasure  now  without 
consulting  him.  She  welcomes  the  attentions  of  a  more 
youthful  and  more  gentlemanly  admirer,  Ulitandre  (played 
by  La  Grange)!  In  the  course  of  the  three  acts  she  dis- 
closes herself  to  be  a  conscienceless  creature;  and  her 
husband  has  good  reason  to  keep  strict  guard  over  her. 
But  she  is  quick-witted,  and  when  he  sends  for  her  parents 
to  expose  her  perfidy,  she  manages  again  and  again  to  put 
him  in  the  wrong,  so  that  Monsieur  and  Madame  de 
Sottenville  seem  to  be  justified  in  insisting  that  George 
Dandin  shall  apologize  for  his  vain  suspicions.  Aftd^at 
jtl]e  end  the  deceived  and  defeated  husband  declares  that 
is  nothing  left  for  him  to  do  but  to  throw  himself 
headfirst  into  the  river. 

No  one  of  Moliere's  plays  is  more  disconcerting  to  a 
modern  audience  than  'George  Dandin/  ^Ms  a  farce  in 
its  form  and  content;  it  is  almost  a  comedy  here  and^there 
by  the  felicity  of  its  touches  of  humor;  and  it  impresses 
us  sometimes  as  almost  tragic  in  the  inexorability  of  the 


24o  MOLIERE 

domestic  calamity  which  has  befallen  its  central  figure. 
With  his  detestation  of  all  affectation,  Moliere  is  here 
scourging  a  peasant  for  seeking  to  be  socially  superior  to 
his  real  rank;  and  at  the  same  time  the  dramatist  is  not 
taking  sides  with  the  upper  class  to  which  the  peasant  has 
aspired.  £reorge  Dandin  is  very  foolish,  bu^  ey^n^f  the 
^consequences  ofhis  folly  are  severer,  he  is  not  mnrfiJnnlisVi 
nthan  the  Sottenvilles.  And  their  daughter  is  even  less 
estimable;  she  is  worse  than  foolish;  she  is  evil.  In  fact, 
N ^there  is  no  single  sympathetic  characteFmThe  whole  play; 
all  are  more  or  less  repellent;  and  of  no  other  piece  of 
Moliere' s  could  this  be  said.  The  chief  episode  of  the 
story  is  taken  over  from  a  practical  joke  told  in  the  Mid- 
dle Ages;  and  it  is  difficult  not  to  discover  a  medieval 
hardness  in  the  conduct  of  the  plot,  a  medieval  lack  of 
pity,  a  medieval  callousness  which  is  not  far  removed 
from  cruelty.  George  Dandin  is  not  wicked;  he  is  only 
selfish  and  foolish;  but  he  is  punished  for  rus  selfish  folly 
as  if  he  Had  been  wicked. 

This  is  what  trie  spectator  feels  if  he  takes  the  play 
seriously,  or  if  the  piece  is  acted  seriously,  so  as  to  give 
the  spectator  time  to  think.  We  may  be  sure,  however, 
that  Moliere  did  not  mean  the  play  to  be  acted  seriously. 
He  composed  it  to  be  a  component  part  of  a  comedy- 
ballet  on  a  joyous  occasion  when  the  king  had  returned 
triumphant  from  war  and  wanted  his  courtiers  to  rejoice 
with  him.  All  the  contemporary  reports  unite  in  record- 
ing the  incessant  laughter  which  the  comedy  evoked  from 
its  royal  audience.  No  one  of  those  who  beheld  it,  when 
Moliere  was  himself  impersonating  George  Dandin, 
seems  to  have  had  a  suspicion  that  the  play  was  other  than 
a  farce;  and  this  is  evidence  that  the  author-actor  must 
have  conducted  the  performance  in  a  mood  of  tumultuous 


'MEDECIN  MALGRE  LUI'  241 

fun,  sweeping  everything  along  in  a  whirlwind  of  gaiety, 
pushing  character  to  the  edge  of  caricature  and  carrying 
comedy  beyond  the  border  of  farce. 

Perhaps  this  was  easier  then  than  now,  easier  before 
that  hard-hearted  king  and  his  hard-hearted  court,  than 
it  is  to-day  before  us  with  our  overstrained  sensibilities. 
We  may  doubt  whether  any  one  of  all  the  hundreds  of 
those  who  laughed  at  the  antics  of  George  Dandin  and  at 
the  grotesqueness  of  the  Sottenvilles,  two  centuries  and  a 
half  ago  when  the  little  play  was  performed  on  its  sylvan 
stage  in  the  gardens  of  the  palace  under  the  many  candles 
that  dispelled  the  darkness  of  the  midsummer  night — we 
may  doubt  whether  any  one  then  perceived  that  there 
might  be  anything  painful  in  the  misadventure  of  the 
peasant-husband. 

And  yet,  even  if  we  doubt  this,  we  may  wonder  whether 
Moliere  himself  was  glad  of  heart  when  he  composed 
this  play.  Coleridge  asserted  that  "farce  may  often  border 
on  tragedy;  indeed,  farce  is  nearer  tragedy  in  its  essence 
than  comedy  is."  Did  Moliere  know  that  at  the  core 
of  his  farce  there  was  tragedy  ?  Did  he  mean  to  put  it 
there  ?  Was  he  taking  a  sadder  view  of  life,  just  then 
when  his  health  was  weakening,  when  he  was  wearying 
of  the  struggle,  and  when  he  was  sorrowfully  disappointed 
in  his  own  marriage  ?  The  'Misanthrope'  had  been  very 
serious  for  a  comedy,  and  'George  Dandin'  is  very  pitiful 
for  a  farce.  Shakspere  also  had  his  period  of  depression 
when  he  composed  *  Measure  for  Measure'  and  'All's 
Well  that  Ends  Well,'  comedies  that  are  not  at  all  comic. 
But  Shakspere,  not  being  himself  a  comic  actor,  was 
allowed  to  write  tragedy,  and  thus  to  pour  out  amply 
what  was  in  him.  Moliere  had  not  this  privilege;  he 


242  MOLIERE 

had  taken  warning  by  'Don  Garcie'  first  and  then  by  the 
'Misanthrope/  As  actor  and  as  author  he  was  held 
bound  to  make  his  audiences  laugh,  and  from  this  there 
seemed  to  be  for  him  no  escape, 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  'AVARE' 

I 

THIS  year  1668  was  one  of  those  in  which  Moliere 
most  amply  proved  his  superb  productivity.  It  was  in 
February  that  he  had  brought  out  the  easy  and  polished 
'Amphitryon';  in  July  he  had  followed  it  with  'George 
Dandin';  in  September,  only  two  months  later,  he  pro- 
duced at  the  Palais-Royal  the  'Avare/  a  comedy  in  five 
acts;  and  these  three  plays  were  a  splendid  harvest  for 
the  short  space  of  nine  months. 

The  'Avare'  is  in  prose,  which  was  contrary  to  the 
custom  of  the  theater  then,  when  a  five  act  play,  whether 
comic  or  tragic,  was  expected  to  be  clothed  in  verse,  the 
less  ornate  prose  being  good  enough  only  for  less  important 
pieces  in  one  act  or  in  three.  That  the  author  did  not 
present  this  play  dressed  out  in  riming  alexandrines  is  to 
be  ascribed  to  the  haste  with  which  he  had  to  work  to 
meet  the  necessities  of  his  company — the  same  reason 
which  accounted  for  the  use  of  prose  in  the  earlier  '  Don 
Juan/  also  prepared  in  a  hurry.  'Tartuffe'  was  still 
under  the  interdict,  and  Moliere's  comrades  relied  on  him 
to  keep  them  supplied  with  new  plays.  It  is  known  that 
Moliere,  like  Ben  Jonson,  was  in  the  habit  of  writing 
his  first  draft  of  a  play  in  prose,  which  he  finally  turned 
into  verse;  and  in  preparing  the  'Princesse  d'Elide'  for 

243 


244  MOLIERE 

its  speedy  performance  before  the  king,  he  had  time  to 
versify  only  the  first  two  acts,  leaving  the  later  scenes  in 
prose.  In  the  'Avare'  we  can  detect  many  metrical 
lines,  awaiting  in  vain  their  later  incorporation  into  the 
sequence  of  rimed  couplets. 

Perhaps  it  was  due  also  to  the  need  for  working  against 
time  that  he  turned  once  more  to  Plautus  for  the  sugges- 
tion of  this  new  play,  which  is  however  not  fairly  to  be  de- 
scribed as  an  adaptation  of  the  'Aulularia'  any  more  than 
is  the  'Comedy  of  Errors'  to  be  dismissed  as  an  imitation 
of  the  'Menaechmi.'  Moliere  was  willing  enough  to  bor- 
row freely  from  any  predecessor,  but  he  was  never  content 
to  follow  servilely  in  the  footsteps  of  any  one  of  those  he 
was  imitating;  and  he  rehandled  with  the  utmost  freedom 
the  humorous  material  he  found  in  the  Roman  piece. 
There  is  little  more  in  the  comic  drama  of  Plautus  than 
an  ingenious  intrigue,  whereas  the  play  which  Moliere 
made  out  of  the  Latin  piece  is  on  a  higher  plane.  It  is  a 
comedy-of-character  in  which  the  external  story  is  sub- 
ordinated to  the  exhibition  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
miser  himself. 

The  plot  does  not  exist  for  its  own  sake,  as  in  Plautus, 
but  solely  to  set  forth  the  various  aspects  of  personified 
avarice.  When  Moliere  interested  himself  in  the  scrutiny 
and  in  the  delineation  of  a  specific  character,  the  mis- 
anthrope or  the  miser,  he  was  inclined  to  be  a  little  care- 
less about  the  conduct  of  his  plot  and  the  logical  winding 
up  of  his  story.  Sometimes  he  is  a  little  too  careless; 
and  in  the  concentration  of  his  attention  on  the  dominat- 
ing figure  of  his  play  he  does  not  take  trouble  enough  to 
sustain  the  jpjresentation  of  character  by  an  adequate 
frameworETof  story. ^TTiis~fs  whatfTfappened  when  he 
wrote  the  'Misanthrope';  and  the  unsatisfactory  recep- 


THE  'AVARE'  245 

tion  of  that  elevated  comedy  may  have  served  as  a  warning 
to  him  and  led  him  to  support  his  portrait  of  the  miser 
with  a  pair  of  love-stories  and  to  relieve  its  sadness  by 
frequent  episodes  of  sheer  fun,  almost  farcical  in  their 
exuberant  humor. 

II 

The  miser  is  Harpagon,  of  course  acted  by  Moliere 
himself.  He  is  a  burgher  of  means,  having  to  keep  up 
his  position  in  society.  He  has  a  pair  of  horses,  which  he 
starves;  and  his  coachman  is  also  his  cook,  whereby  he  is 
enabled  to  save  the  wages  of  one  servant.  He  has  a  son 
Cleante  and  a  daughter  Elise.  A  young  man,  Valere, 
who  has  fallen  in  love  with  Elise,  has  managed  to  per- 
suade Harpagon  to  take  him  as  a  steward.  Once  in  the 
house  he  has  succeeded  in  winning  the  affection  of  Elise. 
Cleante,  in  his  turn,  has  fallen  in  love  with  Mariane, 
the  very  girl  whom  Harpagon  has  resolved  to  take  for 
his  second  wife.  To  further  his  wooing  Cleante  needs 
money;  and  he  seeks  to  borrow  it  on  his  expectations. 
He  consents  to  exorbitant  terms  of  interest;  and  when  he 
is  brought  face  to  face  with  the  lender,  he  finds  out  that 
the  unscrupulous  usurer  is  his  own  father,  and  Harpagon 
discovers  that  the  spendthrift  he  was  ready  to  pluck  is 
his  own  son. 

Harpagon  has  resolved  also  to  marry  off  his  daughter 
to  an  elderly  friend,  Anselnie,  who  will  take  her  without 
a  dowry,  for  which  reason  the  miser  refuses  absolutely  to 
listen  to  the  protests  of  Valere  and  of  Elise  hereelf.  Thus 
we  see  a  violent  breach  between  father  and  daughter, 
following  the  violent  breach  between  father  and  son. 
Elise  is  determined  to  marry  Valere,  and  Cleante  is  de- 
termined to  marry  Mariane,  in  absolute  disregard  of 


246  MOLIERE 

their  father's  commands.  At  this  juncture  Harpagon 
discovers  the  disappearance  of  a  casket  which  contains 
ten  thousand  livres  and  which  he  has  carefully  hidden. 
He  is  stricken  to  the  soul  by  this  loss  and  his  despair  is  as 
overwhelming  and  as  outspoken  as  that  of  Shylock.  The 
^easket  had  been  found  by  one  of  the  servants  and  given  to 
Cleante.  But  Harpagon,  suspecting  Valere,  sends  for  the 
police.  And  now  Moliere  feels  that  his  work  is  done  and 
he  hastens  to  bring  the  play  to  an  abrupt  conclusion.  He 
has  so  contrived  his  succession  of  episodes  that  Harpagon 
has  been  presented  to  the  spectators  from  every  possible 
angle.  The  miser  has  been  turned  inside  out  for  the 
audience  to  laugh  at  him  and  to  take  warning  by  him. 
And  this  was  what  the  author  had  at  heart;  and  when 
his  object  was  once  attained,  the  comedy  was  complete. 
At  this  moment,  therefore,  Anselme  is  brought  on, 
for  the  first  time,  when  all  the  other  characters  are  as- 
sembled; and  the  play  is  wound  up  arbitrarily  by  a  se- 
quence of  unexpected  recognitions,  such  as  were  common 
enough  in  Greek  comedy  and  such  as  Aristotle  would  not 
have  disapproved,  however  artificial  this  ending  may  seem 
to  us  moderns.  In  self-defense  Valere  has  to  declare 
who  he  really  is;  and  it  turns  out  that  he  is  the  brother  of 
Mariane,  separated  from  her  in  infancy  by  a  shipwreck. 
It  appears  further  that  Valere  and  Mariane  are  the  long- 
lost  children  of  Anselme  who  is  delighted  to  recover  them. 
To  his  new-found  son  the  new-found  father  willingly 
yields  Elise  whom  he  had  come  to  marry.  And  when 
Cleante  promises  to  restore  to  his  father  the  stolen  cas- 
ket with  the  contents  intact,  Harpagon  instantly  gives 
his  consent  to  his  son's  marriage  with  Mariane.  Char- 
acteristically, he  refuses  to  make  any  provision  for  either 
of  his  children  about  to  enter  on  the  responsibilities  of 


THE  'AVARE'  247 

marriage;  but  as  it  happens,  this  does  not  matter,  since 
the  convenient  Anselme  is  a  man  of  large  means,  quite 
willing  to  support  both  his  son  and  his  daughter. 


Ill 

From  this  bald  summary  it  will  be  seen  that  the  unity 
of  the  play  lies  in  the  single  character  of  Harpagqn,  and 
that  the  other  personages  of  the  piece  are  set  in  motion 
mainly  to  exhibit  one  or  another- of  Harpagon's  idiosyn- 
crasies.. He  dominates  the  play;  one  might  almost  say 
'that  he  is  the  play,  since  it  exists  only  that  he  may 
stand  before  us  alive  in  every  lineament.  He  is  a  bold 
projection  of  a  figure  made  vital  by  a  single  passion.  He 
is  so  possessed  by  this  lust  for  gain,  he  is  so  completely 
in  its  grasp,  that  he  loses  self-control  and  talks  aloud  to 
himself  of  his  own  secrets,  only  to  arouse  himself  when 
he  discovers  his  children  near  him  and  to  tremble  for  fear 
they  may  have  overheard  him.  He  is  so  overmastered 
by  greed  and  by  the  desire  to  continue  to  enjoy  the  results 
of  his  rapacity  that  when  he  is  told  by  a  self-seeking  flat- 
terer how  he  is  likely  to  survive  his  children  and  his  grand- 
children, he  has  an  exclamation  of  delight,  inhuman  in 
its  unconscious  selfishness. 

There  are  scenes  in  which  Harpagon  may  seem  for  a 
moment  to  be  almost  a  caricature  of  himself,  so  violent  is 
he  in  his  intensity.  With  far  more  of  the  variety  and  of 
the  color  of  our  common  humanity  he  has  the  large  cer- 
tainty of  outline  and  the  immense  simplicity  of  the  most 
successful  characters  in  the  English  comedy-of-humors, 
Sir  Epicure  Mammon,  for  example,  and  Volpone.  And 
it  may  be  noted  that  Ben  Jonson's  'Case  is  Altered'  was 
derived  in  part  also  from  the  same  play  of  Plautus  that 


248  MOLIERE 

Moliere  utilized  in  the  ' Avare/  and  that  Captain  Boba- 
dil  is  only  a  splendid  resuscitation  of  that  stock-figure 
of  Graeco-Roman  comedy,  the  braggart.  But  Moliere's 
humor  is  rarely  so  extravagant  as  Ben  Jonson's,  so  hard 
or  so  metallic;  it  is  more  human,  and  more  often  relieved 
by  contrast.  In  this  very  play  there  is  genuine  sentiment 
in  the  wooing  of  Cleante  and  Valere,  more  attractive  than 
the  rather  perfunctory  love-making  in  several  of  his  earlier 
pieces. 

And  yet  it  must  be  said  that  although  Moliere  has  a 
genial  sympathy  with  the  wooing  of  young  men  and 
maidens  and  takes  care  that  they  mate  happily  at  the  fall 
of  the  curtain,  he  does  not  put  them  in  the  forefront  of  the 
action;  he  reserves  himself  rather  for  the  portrayal  of 
the  more  vigorously  comic  characters.  Here  he  stands  in 
sharp  contrast  with  Shakspere,  who  was  also  accustomed 
to  commingle  the  grave  and  the  gay  in  his  romantic- 
comedies.  The  English  dramatist  often  employs  a  semi- 
tragic  sub-plot  to  sustain  the  story  of  successful  courtship 
in  which  he  is  mainly  interested,  whereas  the  French 
dramatist  centers  attention  on  a  semi-tragic  main  plot, 
relieving  it  by  a  few  scenes  of  love-making.  In  the 
'Avare/  for  example,  the  two  pairs  of  lovers  help  to  dispel 
the  gloom  inevitably  evolved  by  the  profound  portrayal 
of  the  sordid  avarice  of  Harpagon.  In  the  'Merchant  of 
Venice/  the  comedy  opens  and  ends  with  the  courtship 
and  married  life  of  the  brilliant  and  fascinating  heroine; 
and  the  dark  profile  of  Shylock,  after  having  lowered 
through  the  middle  of  the  play,  serving  to  stiffen  the  com- 
edy almost  into  tragedy,  is  not  allowed  to  cast  a  shadow 
over  the  joyous  last  act.  In  Shakspere's  comedy  the  ut- 
most effort  of  the  dramatist  is  not  focused  on  Shylock. 
In  Moliere's  play  it  is  focused  on  Harpagon. 


THE  'AVARE'  249 

There  might  be  profit  in  pushing  further  the  comparison 
of  the  English  comedy  with*  the  French.  Although  the 
foundation  of  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  is  medieval  in  its 
fantasy,  since  it  is  only  our  willingness  to  make-believe 
which  permits  us  to  accept  the  arrant  absurdity  of  the 
three  caskets  and  of  the  pound  of  flesh,  the  characters 
who  people  this  impossible  plot  demand  no  apology;  they 
are  as  easily  understood  as  any  other  human  beings.  In 
the  'Avare/  on  the  other  hand,  the  main  story  makes  no 
demand  on  our  credulity;  it  is  possible  and  plausible — 
except  perhaps  in  the  perfunctory  winding  up  and  marry- 
ing off.  Where  we  are  left  a  little  in  obscurity  is  in  our 
perfect  understanding  of  the  central  figure,  of  Harpagon 
himself. 

In  classic  French  comedy  there  is  often  extreme  sim- 
plification of  character  presentation,  and  we  are  frequently 
told  less  about  the  character  than  we  should  like  to  learn. 
In  the  'Misanthrope/  for  example,  Celimene  is  intro- 
duced to  us  as  a  young  widow  only  twenty;  and  we  have 
no  further  information  about  her.  We  know  nothing 
about  her  first  husband,  or  her  own  family;  she  stands 
forth  alone  for  what  she  is,  and  we  must  get  acquainted 
with  her  as  we  observe  her  in  the  play  itself.  The  same 
extreme  simplification  is  carried  even  further  in  the 
presenting  of  Harpagon;  and  here  it  is  more  disconcert- 
ing, because  we  see  him  in  circumstances  which  seem  to 
call  for  explanation,  which  are  not  essential  to  his  ruling 
characteristics,  and  which  are,  some  of  them,  apparently 
incongruous. 

How  has  Harpagon  acquired  his  fortune  ?  Has  he 
inherited  it  or  did  he  make  it  himself?  What  is  his  posi- 
tion in  society  which  compels  him  to  keep  a  carriage  in 
spite  of  himself,  to  give  entertainments,  to  have  a  staff  of 


250  MOLIERE 

servants  ?  How  is  it  that  he,  a  man  of  means,  with  ex- 
perience in  guarding  money,  can  find  no  better  place  of 
security  for  a  large  sum  than  to  hide  it  in  a  casket  ?  Why 
does  he,  an  elderly  man,  not  of  an  amorous  temperament, 
desire  to  take  a  young  wife  ?  These  are  the  queries  we 
find  ourselves  asking  as  we  see  Harpagon  moving  before 
our  eyes.  No  doubt  it  would  have  been  possible  for 
Moliere  to  answer  these  questions;  but  he  has  not  cared 
to  do  so.  He  needed  all  these  irrelevancies  to  set  forth 
the  several  peculiarities  of  Harpagon,  and  he  assumed  them 
without  troubling  to  explain. 

As  a  result  of  this  the  miser,  powerfully  as  he  is  drawn, 
remains  somewhat  enigmatic  and  sometimes  even  a  little 
inconsistent  with  himself.  The  motives  of  Harpagon 
are  not  always  as  clear  as  those  of  Shylock.  The  reason 
for  this  is  probably  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  Shakspere 
is  not  presenting  us  with  an  embodiment  of  Revenge,  but 
with  a  specific  character  who  happens  to  be  seeking  ven- 
geance, whereas  Moliere  is  giving  us  not  so  much  a  typi- 
cal miser  as  the  embodiment  of  Avarice  itself.  In  so  far  as 
this  is  the  case,  he  has  reverted  to  the  method  of  the  old 
Morality  with  its  personifications  of  abstract  qualities. 
And  here  in  his  turn  Moliere  is  medieval. 


IV 

This  much  may  be  admitted  without  detracting  from 
the  ultimate  value  of  Moliere's  searching  comedy.  The 
'Avare'  is  not  equal  to  'TartufiV  in  solidity  of  struc- 
ture and  in  the  intimate  relation  of  character  to  environ- 
ment; but  it  is  none  the  less  one  of  its  author's  most 
veracious  portrayals  of  humanity.  It  is  like  'Tartuffe/ 
in  thaj:  its  action  passes  inside  a  single  household  and  in 


THE  'AVARE'  251 

that  it  displays  before  us  the  possible  disintegration  of  a 
family  in  consequence  of  a  single  corroding  vice.  To  Mo- 
liere,  inheritor  of  the  social  tradition  of  the  French,  the 
family  is  the  foundation  of  society;  it  is  sacred.  What- 
ever endangers  the  security  of  the  family  is  to  be  denounced 
and  exposed  as  a  warning  and  as  a  lesson. 

He  may  not  be  a  deliberate  moralist  and  he  may  not 
have  intended  to  point  a  moral.  But  in  almost  every  one 
of  his  larger  comedies  we  have  a  play  which  is  a  picture 
of  life,  which  provides  the  abundant  laughter  we  expect 
in  the  comic  drama,  and  which  furthermore  warns  us 
against  yielding  to  the  solicitations  of  evil.  He  makes  us 
see  the  dire  effects  of  TartufFe's  hypocrisy  and  of  Orgon's 
credulity,  of  Celimene's  insincerity  and  of  George  Dan- 
din's  snobbishness.  And  in  the  'Avare'  he  puts  before 
us  the  picture  of  a  family  rent  asunder  by  the  fault  of  the 
father,  who  has  neglected  to  do  his  duty  by  his  only  son 
and  his  only  daughter. 

The  children  of  such  a  father  are  not  likely  to  be  alto- 
gether estimable;  and  Moliere  was  too  truthful  to  offset 
the  vice  of  Harpagon  with  the  superior  virtues  of  the 
miser's  son  and  daughter.  But  the  author  is  careful  to 
make  us  see  that  the  fault  is  rather  Harpagon's  than 
Cleante's  or  Elise's.  It  is  because  Harpagon  is  what  he 
is  that  Cleante  is  driven  to  seek  money  on  usury  and  to 
look  forward  willingly  to  his  father's  death,  whereby  he 
will  come  into  his  inheritance.  It  is  because  Harpagon 
is  what  he  is  that  Elise  has  allowed  herself  to  be  drawn 
into  a  love-affair  without  her  father's  knowledge  and 
against  her  father's  wishes.  It  is  because  Harpagon  is 
what  he  is  that  Valere  has  been  enabled  to  work  his  way 
into  the  house  to  carry  on  his  secret  intrigue  with  Elise. 
It  is  because  Harpagon  is  what  he  is  that  all  these  perils 


252  MOLIERE 

threaten  the  solidarity  of  the  home.  The  final  result  of 
Harpagon's  indulgence  in  his  single  vice  of  avarice,  with 
all  its  attendant  evils  and  its  inexorable  consequences,  is 
frightful.  By  this  picture  of  the  contamination  and  the 
corrosion  of  those  who  are  closely  related  to  the  miser, 
and  by  the  severe  delineation  of  the  dissolution  his  avarice 
must  bring  about — it  is  by  this  that  Moliere's  play  stands 
out  as  one  of  its  author's  most  valuable  social  dramas. 

The  'Avare'  may  be  open  to  minor  criticisms;  and  as 
a  specimen  of  stage-craft  it  is  distinctly  inferior  to  'Tar- 
tuffe.'  It  may  not  always  be  as  clear  as  it  might  be  or  as 
consistent;  its  exposition  may  be  slovenly  and  its  ending 
may  be  huddled;  it  may  have  moments  of  an  exaggeration 
which  is  almost  caricature;  it  may  have  more  blemishes 
than  any  true  lover  of  Moliere  will  readily  admit;  but  in 
spite  of  all  that  may  be  said  against  it,  there  is  no  denying 
its  high  value  and  its  worthiness  to  occupy  a  position  only 
just  below  that  accorded  to  his  acknowledged  master- 
pieces. This  is  what  the  piercing  mind  of  Goethe  per- 
ceived clearly  when  he  declared  that  the  'Avare,'  "in 
which  a  vice  destroys  the  piety  uniting  father  and  son,  has 
extraordinary  grandeur  and  is,  in  a  high  degree,  tragic." 

Tragic  may  seem  a  strange  term  to  apply  to  a  comedy; 
but  it  has  been  applied  also  to  the  comedy  in  which  Shy- 
lock  appears.  The  'Avare'  is  a  comedy,  no  doubt,  a 
comedy-of-character,  a  comedy  of  austere  kind;  but  it  is 
perhaps  better  to  be  described  as  a  social  drama.  Har- 
pagon  is  comic  in  intent,  but  he  is  often  almost  tragic  in 
intensity;  and  the  theme  of  the  play  is  somber.  In  itself 
avarice  is  not  an  amusing  spectacle.  In  spite  of  all  Mo- 
liere's  efforts  to  lighten  the  piece  with  its  two  love-stories 
and  to  brighten  it  with  extraneous  episodes  of  almost  ex- 
travagant humor,  its  performance  does  not  arouse  the 


THE  'AVARE'  253 

hearty  laughter  which  is  evoked  by  the  earlier  acts  of 
'TartufFe/  which  had  also  a  somber  theme,  but  which 
Moliere  was  able  to  make  less  gloomy  because  he  wrote 
the  immensely  humorous  part  of  Orgon  for  his  own  acting. 
Perhaps  it  was  due  to  this  lack  of  frank  gaiety  that  the 
'Avare'  did  not  at  first  prove  very  attractive  to  the  Paris- 
ian playgoers.  In  time,  however,  its  serious  merits  were 
recognized  and  it  became  one  of  the  more  popular  of  his 
plays.  It  is  still  frequently  acted  at  the  Theatre  Francais; 
and  every  ambitious  French  comedian  is  anxious  to  prove 
himself  in  the  part  of  Harpagon  and  to  measure  himself 
with  his  distinguished  predecessors. 


In  considering  the  more  important  plays  written  by 
Moliere  after  he  had  been  grievously  disappointed  by  the 
prohibition  of  'Tartuffe'  we  are  struck  by  a  deeper  note 
and  by  a  harder  tone  than  we  have  perceived  in  any  of 
the  gayer  pieces  composed  before  'Tartuffe.'  There  is 
a  gravity,  a  suggestion  of  the  sadder  aspects  of  life  in 
'Don  Juan'  and  in  the  'Misanthrope/  in  'George  Dandin' 
and  in  the  'Avare,'  which  their  author's  earlier  comedies 
had  not  prepared  us  for.  In  no  one  of  these  four  plays 
is  the  subject  really  comic  in  itself,  even  if  the  actor- 
author  felt  himself  forced  to  make  the  piece  as  laughter- 
provoking  as  he  could.  Their  humorous  characters  and 
their  more  mirthful  episodes  are  not  always  integral  to 
the  theme  of  the  play;  they  are  not  always  logical  out- 
growths of  the  story;  and  they  seem  sometimes  to  be 
almost  excrescences  devised  especially  to  distract  the  at- 
tention of  the  audience  from  the  fundamental  seriousness 
of  the  central  idea. 


254  MOLIERE 

To  point  this  out  is  easy  enough,  but  not  to  explain  the 
reason  for  it.  Perhaps  the  state  of  Moliere's  health  led 
him  to  take  a  darker  view  of  life  than  he  had  taken  earlier 
in  the  first  flush  of  his  youthful  success.  Perhaps  the 
continued  strain  of  his  incessant  activity  as  actor,  as  au- 
thor and  as  manager,  was  wearing  on  him  and  wearying 
him.  Perhaps  the  patent  incompatibility  of  temper  be- 
tween himself  and  his  charming  young  wife,  ardent  in  the 
pursuit  of  pleasure  and  eager  for  admiration,  may  have 
driven  him  in  upon  himself,  destroying  his  earlier  cheer- 
fulness and  embittering  his  earlier  hopefulness.  These 
are  all  personal  reasons  why  Moliere  was  no  longer  light- 
heartedly  composing  comedies  as  frankly  comic  as  the 
'Precieuses  Ridicules'  and  the  'Ecole  des  Maris/ 

It  may  be,  however,  that  a  simpler  explanation  is  to  be 
sought  outside  the  circumstances  of  Moliere's  own  life, 
in  the  natural  development  of  his  artistic  ambitions.  He 
has  said  himself  that  it  was  a  strange  task  to  undertake  to 
make  people  laugh;  and  it  may  very  well  be  that  he  had 
tired  of  this  task  of  laugh-making,  and  that  he  now  found 
himself  inclined  to  set  forth  the  more  serious  incidents  of 
the  human  comedy.  This  may  be  the  real  reason  why 
the  four  more  important  plays  composed  while  'Tartuffe' 
was  still  under  interdict  are  to  be  described  as  social 
dramas  rather  than  as  comedies  pure  and  simple.  Taken 
together  this  group  confirms  the  impression  that  Moliere 
was  groping  tentatively  and  doubtfully  toward  a  new  type 
of  play,  in  which  he  could  feel  at  liberty  to  express  more 
liberally  his  later  and  deeper  views  of  society  than  he  had 
been  able  to  express  earlier  in  pieces  whose  chief  purpose 
was  to  arouse  laughter.  In  'Tartuffe'  itself,  which  pre- 
ceded these  four  plays,  the  author  had  been  able  to  achieve 
the  object  of  this  riper  ambition;  and  he  had  produced 


THE  'AVARE'  255 

a  play  which  had  become  a  social  drama  without  ceasing 
to  be  a  comedy.  Perhaps,  in  composing  'Tartuffe/  he 
had  builded  better  than  he  knew,  as  is  the  case  so  often 
with  artists  of  genuine  inspiration,  whereas  in  the  four 
plays  which  followed  it,  and  which  were  due  in  some 
measure  to  the  same  impulse,  his  uncertainty  of  aim  pre- 
vented his  skill  from  being  so  completely  successful. 

Whatever  the  explanation  may  be,  and  whether  the 
reasons  are  personal  or  artistic,  the  fact  remains  that  the 
larger  plays  composed  by  Moliere  at  this  period  of  his 
career  have  a  certain  likeness  to  each  other  and  a  certain 
unlikeness  to  the  more  comic  comedies  written  earlier. 
They  seem  to  indicate  that,  for  the  moment,  at  least,  he 
was  more  or  less  unsettled  in  his  attitude.  This  epoch  in 
Moliere's  development  as  a  dramatist  has  its  parallel  in 
the  career  of  Shakspere.  In  Moliere's  case  the  period  of 
uncertainty  came  to  an  end  with  the  removal  of  the  pro- 
hibition of  the  public  performance  of  his  masterpiece; 
and  this  took  place  less  than  six  months  after  the  first 
performance  of  the  'Avare/ 

VI 

The  permission  to  act  'TartufFe*  followed  hard  upon 
the  proclamation  of  the  so-called  "Peace  of  the  Church"; 
and  it  was  possibly  a  consequence  of  that  lull  in  theo- 
logical strife.  Louis  XIV  was  sternly  resolved  to  put 
down  factions  of  every  kind,  in  church  as  well  as  in  state. 
As  he  insisted  upon  slavish  obedience  to  himself  as  king, 
so  he  demanded  an  uncompromising  unity  in  the  ecclesi- 
astical realm.  He  believed  in  absolute  authority;  and 
he  refused  to  allow  any  of  his  subjects  to  think  for  them- 
selves. Probably  it  was  in  part  the  mental  independ- 


256  MOLIERE 

ence  of  the  Jansenists  that  set  him  so  sternly  against  them 
and  led  him  in  time  to  crush  them  out  almost  as  harshly 
as  he  was  afterward  to  crush  out  the  Huguenots.  In 
the  earlier  years  of  his  reign  Louis  XIV  was  annoyed 
by  the  turmoil  which  raged  in  the  church,  with  the  con- 
stant struggle  of  Gallicans  and  Ultramontanes  and  with 
the  incessant  intriguing  of  the  Jesuits  against  the  Jansen- 
ists; and  at  last  the  king  used  the  full  weight  of  his  au- 
thority to  bring  these  unseemly  bickerings  to  an  end. 
Impossible  as  was  a  durable  reconciliation  between  par- 
ties holding  diametrically  opposite  views  upon  questions 
of  eternal  importance,  the  monarch  was  able  for  a  little 
while  to  flatter  himself  that  he  had  accomplished  his 
purpose. 

And  one  immediate  result  of  this  truce  in  ecclesiastical 
warfare  was  the  granting  to  Moliere  of  permission  to 
perform  'Tartuffe.'  In  its  third  form  but  under  its  origi- 
nal title  the  play  was  brought  out  at  the  Palais-Royal  in 
February,  1669.  Its  instant  success  must  have  greatly 
gratified  its  author,  so  long  heart-sick  with  deferred 
hope.  After  the  performance  of  'Tartuffe'  Moliere's 
serenity  seems  to  have  returned;  and  the  plays  which 
immediately  followed  are  in  marked  contrast  with  the 
plays  which  immediately  preceded. 

Moliere  was  now  forty-seven  and  he  had  attained  to 
the  summit  of  his  achievement.  He  was  to  live  only  four 
years  longer  and  he  was  still  to  bring  forth  one  of  his  most 
perfect  comedies,  the  'Femmes  Savantes';  in  these  last 
years  there  was  to  be  no  falling  off  in  his  work;  but  already 
had  he  displayed  adequately  every  aspect  of  his  genius. 
He  had  begun  by  imitating  the  comedy-of-masks  and  by 
composing  pieces  of  external  activity.  He  had  risen 
slowly  from  the  comedy-of-intrigue  to  the  comedy-of-man- 


THE  'AVARE'  257 

ners  and  to  the  comedy-of-character.  He  had  achieved 
what  Lord  Morley  terms  "the  fine  gravity  of  'TartufFe,'" 
the  masterpiece  of  comedy  sustained  and  stiffened  by 
drama.  He  had  essayed  a  series  of  social  dramas,  com- 
edies not  fundamentally  comic.  He  had  invented  the 
comedy-ballet.  He  had  been  gracefully  lyric  in  the 
humorous  fantasy  of  'Amphitryon.'  He  had  ranged  the 
gamut  of  the  theater  of  his  time;  and  he  had  exhausted 
the  possibilities  of  the  dramatic  formulas  then  admissible 
on  the  stage.  And  thereafter  he  could  go  no  further  for- 
ward; he  could  only  undertake  again  one  or  another  of 
the  forms  which  he  had  already  employed  triumphantly. 
There  were  no  more  worlds  for  him  to  conquer;  and  if 
he  had  died  after  the  first  performance  of  the  'Avare'  his 
fame  would  be  as  secure  as  it  is  to-day  and  as  solidly 
established. 

This  is  evident  enough  to  us  now,  and  it  was  evident 
also  to  those  who  lived  a  generation  after  him.  From  his 
own  generation  it  seems  to  have  been  hidden.  His  con- 
temporaries did  not  see  that  he  had  already  proved  him- 
self to  be  the  foremost  of  comic  dramatists.  Boileau  may 
have  suspected  this  and  La  Fontaine  also;  but  the  rest  of 
the  men  of  his  time  did  not  perceive  it.  Perhaps  this  was 
natural  enough;  we  need  to  bear  in  mind  always  that 
while  we  think  of  Moliere  only  as  an  author,  they  who 
had  seen  him  on  the  stage  thought  of  him  mainly  as  an 
actor.  To  them  the  player  loomed  larger  than  the  play- 
wright; and  there  were  even  those  who  held  that  it  was 
only  the  surpassing  skill  of  the  player  which  gave  vital- 
ity to  the  works  of  the  playwright.  And  the  actor  was 
thought  of  as  a  performer  of  broadly  comic  parts,  as  Mas- 
carille  and  as  the  often  revived  Sganarelle,  rather  than  as 
Alceste.  He  was  considered  as  an  actor  of  farces.  In- 


258  MOLIERE 

deed,  it  was  about  this  time  that  there  was  painted  a 
picture,  now  in  the  possession  of  the  Comedie-Francaise, 
depicting  the  chief  drolls  of  the  day;  and  there  amid 
Gros-Guillaume  and  Scaramouche  and  their  fellows,  we 
find  Moliere  also.  In  the  eyes  of  his  contemporaries  this 
was  his  proper  place,  and  no  voice  was  raised  in  protest 
when  the  author  of  'Tartuffe'  was  set  by  the  side  of  these 
clowns  whose  sole  pleasure  it  was  to  make  the  people  of 
Paris  laugh  loudly. 

Shakspere  suffered  from  no  indignity  of  this  sort,  partly 
because  he  was  not  prominent  as  a  performer.  But  it 
may  be  doubted  also  whether  many  of  Shakspere's  con- 
temporaries suspected  his  indisputable  primacy.  Those 
who  had  met  him  were  abundant  in  praise  of  the  man 
himself,  of  his  gentleness  and  of  his  copious  industry;  but 
no  one  of  them,  while  he  was  yet  alive,  voiced  the  opinion 
of  posterity  that  he  was  the  supreme  poet,  not  only  of  his 
age  but  of  all  time* 


CHAPTER  XV 

'MONSIEUR   DE    POURCEAUGNAC'  AND  THE 
'BOURGEOIS  GENTILHOMME' 

I 

SOMETIMES  to  delight  the  king  and  sometimes  to  attract 
the  populace  of  Paris,  Moliere  relinquished  the  comedy 
which  moves  us  to  thoughtful  laughter  and  returned  to 
the  frank  farce  which  awakens  only  unthinking  mirth. 
He  had  proved  the  truth  of  De  Quincey's  assertion  that 
"inevitably  as  human  intercourse  in  cities  grows  more 
refined,  comedy  will  grow  more  subtle;  it  will  build  itself 
on  distinctions  of  character  less  grossly  defined,  and  on 
features  of  manners  more  delicate  and  impalpable."  He 
had  attained  to  the  most  delicate  distinction  of  manners 
in  the  'Misanthrope';  but  he  never  shrank  from  employ- 
ing the  swifter  effects  of  the  farce  with  which  he  had  first 
won  success  as  a  playwright.  Yet  some  of  these  later 
farcical  comedies  are  in  advance  upon  the  earlier  in  that 
they  are  raised  almost  to  the  plane  of  comedy  by  the  richer 
humanity  of  the  central  characters. 

*  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac'  is  a  farce  and  so  is  the 
'Etourdi/  In  both  plays  the  humor  arises  in  large  part 
from  the  ingenuity  of  the  mechanism  of  the  situation;  but 
Pourceaugnac  himself  is  a  more  recognizable  human  being 
than  Mascarille;  and  the  piece  in  which  he  appears  has 
not  only  more  absolute  fun  but  also  a  larger  and  more 

259 


26o  MOLIERE 

liberal  humor.  Moliere  was  still  steadily  growing,  not 
only  as  a  psychologist  but  also  as  a  humorist.  There  is 
in  *  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac'  and  in  the  *  Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme'  a  breadth  and  a  solidity  of  comic  resource 
which  recalls  Rabelais,  and  an  imaginative  fantasy  which 
reminds  us  of  Aristophanes  in  his  wildest  flights  of  fun- 
making. 

It  was  at  Chambord  in  October,  1669,  that  Moliere 
brought  out  before  the  king  and  the  court  'Monsieur  de 
Pourceaugnac,'  a  three  act  comedy-ballet  in  prose,  for 
which  Lulli  composed  the  music  and  in  which  there  were 
the  customary  interludes  of  song  and  dance.  In  Novem- 
ber the  comic  play  was  produced  at  the  Palais-Royal, 
where  it  proved  as  attractive  to  the  Parisians  as  it  had 
been  entertaining  to  the  courtiers.  And  its  superb  gaiety 
has  assured  its  popularity  to  the  present  day,  although  it 
is  now  not  so  often  performed  as  a  dozen  of  its  author's 
other  plays. 

The  plot  is  very  simple  and  the  framework  is  again  that 
of  the  comedy-of-masks,  which  Moliere  always  found  con- 
venient for  his  purpose  when  he  aimed  merely  at  laugh- 
ter. The  set  is  the  traditional  public  place  where  all  the 
characters  can  meet  at  will.  On  one  side  is  the  house 
of  a  certain  physician,  and  on  the  other  is  the  house  of 
Oronte,  the  father  of  Julie,  with  whom  Eraste  is  in  love. 
Oronte  is  what  Gorgibus  was  in  the  Earlier  farces;  and 
Julie  and  Eraste  are  the  pair  of  young  lovers  common  in 
Italian  comedy.  Eraste' s  ally  in  his  wooing,  Sbrigani,  is 
another  Mascarille.  And  the  one  character  who  is  not 
drawn  from  the  stock-figures  of  the  comedy-of-masks  is 
Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac  himself,  the  part  that  Moliere 
composed  for  his  own  acting.  He  is  no  mere  profile, 
strongly  outlined  and  touched  with  high  color;  he  is  truly 


'MONSIEUR  DE  POURCEAUGNAC'       261 

a  character,  drawn  from  Moliere's  intimate  observation 
of  life.  And  in  the  portrayal  of  this  character  he  was 
profiting  by  the  knowledge  of  provincial  types  accumu- 
lated while  he  was  still  a  stroller,  for  Pourceaugnac  is  a 
provincial,  an  inhabitant  of  Limoges.  The  scene  of  the 
play  is  laid  in  Paris;  and  much  of  the  fun  is  derived  from 
the  contrast  of  this  rustic,  rather  simple  by  nature,  with 
the  livelier  Parisians  who  make  up  the  other  personages 
of  the  piece. 

Oronte  has  never  met  Pourceaugnac,  yet  he  has  ar- 
ranged a  marriage  between  his  young  daughter  and  this 
mature  gentleman  from  the  country.  Julie  herself  is  re- 
solved to  wed  Eraste,  who  has  determined  to  discourage 
the  elderly  wooer  by  every  possible  trick.  In  this  plot 
against  Pourceaugnac' s  peace  of  mind  he  has  enlisted  the 
services  of  Sbrigani.  When  the  provincial  from  Limoges 
arrives  in  Paris,  Eraste  presents  himself  at  once  and  actu- 
ally persuades  his  victim  that  they  are  old  friends,  quite 
in  the  manner  of  the  modern  "confidence-operator."  He 
invites  Pourceaugnac  to  be  his  guest,  and  then  leaves  him 
in  the  hands  of  a  physician,  whom  the  country  gentleman 
supposes  to  be  Eraste's  steward.  The  physician  has  been 
told  that  the  new  arrival  is  a  patient  touched  with  lunacy; 
he  has  summoned  a  colleague;  and  the  two  doctors  hold 
a  consultation  on  Pourceaugnac' s  malady,  to  the  rising 
astonishment  of  that  gentleman.  After  which  an  apothe- 
cary presents  himself  armed  with  the  instrument  of  his 
calling;  and  when  the  perplexed  gentleman  from  Limoges 
seeks  to  escape  from  the  impending  operation,  other 
apothecaries  appear  and  pursue  him  relentlessly.  And 
this  serves  as  an  excuse  for  a  comic  chorus  and  a  pleasant 
dance. 

In  the  second  and  third  acts  misadventure  after  misad- 


262  MOLIERE 

venture  befalls  the  unfortunate  wooer.  Sbrigani  in  dis- 
guise informs  Oronte  that  his  accepted  son-in-law  is  laden 
with  debt  and  that  the  creditors  are  waiting  impatiently 
for  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac' s  marriage  to  the  only 
daughter  of  a  wealthy  man.  Then  Sbrigani  manages  to 
insinuate  to  Pourceaugnac  that  Julie  is  not  a  young  lady 
of  irreproachable  character.  Thus,  when  the  father  and 
the  rustic  suitor  meet  for  the  first  time  they  are  prepared 
to  be  suspicious  of  each  other;  and  Pourceaugnac's 
doubts  are  confirmed  when  Julie  affects  a  wanton  eager- 
ness to  welcome  him  as  her  husband.  Then  Sbrigani 
springs  a  new  trick:  while  Oronte  and  the  provincial  are 
still  disputing,  a  woman,  speaking  the  Provencal  dialect, 
suddenly  appears  with  several  children  and  claims  Pour- 
ceaugnac as  her  lawful  husband;  and  after  a  little  interval 
another  woman,  speaking  the  dialect  of  Picardy,  rushes 
in  with  her  children,  asserting  her  right  to  Pourceaugnac's 
name.  And  the  little  children  drive  the  victim  to  the 
verge  of  despair  by  hanging  to  his  garments  and  calling 
him  "papa."  After  explaining  that  this  is  a  very  serious 
matter  since  bigamy  is  punishable  by  hanging,  Sbrigani 
brings  about  a  consultation  with  two  lawyers,  who  also 
have  their  song  and  dance.  Finally  Sbrigani  aids  the 
thoroughly  frightened  Pourceaugnac  to  disguise  himself 
as  a  woman  (the  device  adopted  by  FalstafF  after  the 
merry  wives  have  befooled  him  into  a  belief  in  impend- 
ing danger).  And  when  the  rustic  has  rushed  away  to 
get  back  to  Limoges  as  speedily  as  he  can,  Oronte  hands 
Julie  over  to  Eraste;  and  the  comedy  ends  with  a  wed- 
ding, as  a  comedy  should. 

This  is  the  most  broadly  amusing  of  all  the  comedy- 
ballets  prepared  by  Moliere  for  the  delight  of  the  monarch. 
It  is  a  farce,  of  course,  and  little  more  than  a  farce,  except 


'MONSIEUR  DE  POURCEAUGNAC'       263 

in  so  far  as  the  character  of  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac 
himself  may  give  it  a  deeper  significance.  Lacking  the 
variety  of  character-portrayal  in  certain  of  the  earlier 
comedy-ballets — the  '  Facheux,'  for  one — it  is  only  a  farce 
wherein  the  humor  may  be  perhaps  a  little  primitive, 
since  the  fun  is  the  result  of  a  succession  of  practical  jokes; 
but  these  practical  jokes  are  every  one  of  them  closely 
related  to  the  main  purpose  of  the  play.  But  when  all 
is  said,  it  is  a  farce  such  as  no  one  but  Moliere  could 
have  written,  and  such  as  Moliere  himself  could  not  have 
written  in  his  earlier  days. 

He  kept  on  developing,  not  only  in  insight  into  human- 
ity and  in  veracity  of  character-drawing,  but  also  in  essen- 
tial humor,  in  the  sense  of  sheer  fun,  in  the  luxuriance  of 
animal  spirits  needed  to  carry  off  a  comic  fantasy  as  ro- 
bustly extravagant  as  'Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac/  There 
is  in  this  piece  an  inexhaustible  fertility  of  device,  every 
trick  being  more  irresistibly  amusing  than  the  one  that 
went  before,  until  the  spectators  feel  themselves  swept  off 
their  feet  by  a  tornado  of  gaiety.  Moreover,  the  humor 
is  always  good  humor;  and  there  is  no  aftertaste  of  bit- 
terness in  the  bubbling  laughter.  The  fun  is  free  and 
spontaneous  and  almost  unctuous  in  its  richness.  Indeed, 
it  is  not  without  a  streak  of  coarseness,  or  rather  of 
earthiness,  of  healthy  realism.  Once  again,  Moliere  is 
like  Shakspere  in  that  his  idealism  is  not  squeamish  and 
does  not  lead  him  to  shrink  from  frank  acceptance  of  the 
baser  facts  of  life.  Their  spirituality  is  indisputable;  but 
it  is  rooted  in  a  wholesome  animality. 


264  MOLIERE 

II 

To  those  who  draw  back  from  life  as  it  really  is  and 
who  insist  on  taking  an  unduly  etherealized  view  of  human 
nature,  the  boisterous  breadth  of  'Monsieur  de  Pour- 
ceaugnac'  will  ever  be  unwelcome.  These  over-refined 
souls  would  probably  prefer  the  more  sentimentalized 
psychology  of  the  next  piece  which  Moliere  prepared  for 
the  king's  pleasure.  This  was  the  'Amants  Magnifiques,' 
a  prose  play  in  five  acts  performed  before  the  monarch  at 
Saint-Germain  in  February,  1670.  The  plot  was  of  the 
sovereign's  own  selection;  at  least  he  asked  Moliere  to 
arrange  a  play  in  which  two  rival  princes  should  woo  a 
princess  by  vying  with  one  another  in  the  sumptuous 
entertainment  to  which  each  of  them  in  turn  invited  her. 
In  the  eyes  of  the  king  and  of  the  courtiers  these  sumptu- 
ous entertainments  were  all-important,  and  the  action  of 
the  play  itself  was  of  value  only  as  it  justified  the  spectac- 
ular effects  which  had  called  it  into  being.  The  acts  of 
the  comedy  were  regarded  only  as  the  interacts  of  the 
more  interesting  spectacle. 

It  was  idle  to  expect  that  Moliere  could  take  any  deep 
interest  in  task-work  of  this  sort.  Yet  he  never  shirked 
it  and  he  did  what  he  was  expected  to  do  in  workmanlike 
fashion.  He  so  constructed  his  story  as  to  introduce  the 
songs  and  dances  and  processions  the  king  delighted  in. 
He  sketched  out  a  little  group  of  characters  sufficiently 
indicated  to  carry  on  the  necessary  plot.  He  took  some 
pains  with  the  heroine,  analyzing  her  shifting  sentiments 
with  a  subtlety  that  prefigured  the  psychological  delicacy 
of  the  later  Marivaux.  He  outlined  the  part  of  a  pleas- 
antly witty  humorist  for  his  own  acting.  He  introduced 
an  astrologer  so  that  he  could  deride  a  pseudo-science  still 


'MONSIEUR  DE  POURCEAUGNAC'       265 

in  favor  in  court-circles.  He  found  occasion  to  set  into 
the  dialogue  of  one  act  a  clever  imitation  of  one  of  Hor- 
ace's odes.  He  scattered  through  the  play  touches  of 
grace  and  strokes  of  light  humor.  In  short,  he  did  all 
that  he  was  called  upon  to  do. 

But  he  cannot  be  said  to  have  done  any  more.  He 
must  have  been  aware  that  the  merits  of  his  play,  what- 
ever they  were,  would  be  obscured  by  the  glitter  of  the  re- 
splendent interludes  in  which  the  chief  courtiers  were  to 
appear  and  even  the  king  himself.  There  was  really  no 
need  for  Moliere  to  attempt  more  than  the  skeleton  of  a 
plot;  and  it  would  have  been  absurd  for  him  to  put  forth 
his  full  strength  under  these  circumstances.  He  had  no 
exaggerated  opinion  of  the  value  of  the  comedy  he  had 
promptly  prepared  on  the  plot  provided  by  the  mon- 
arch. His  haste  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  he  left  the 
dialogue  in  prose,  not  riming  even  the  earlier  acts  as  he 
had  done  with  the  'Princesse  d'Elide/  His  low  estimate 
of  the  acting  value  of  this  play  written  to  order  is  proved 
by  his  never  having  brought  out  the  'Amants  Magni- 
fiques'  at  his  own  theater,  in  spite  of  the  curiosity  which 
must  have  been  aroused  in  the  Parisian  playgoing  public 
by  the  glowing  reports  of  the  performance  before  their 
ruler.  Not  only  did  Moliere  never  produce  the  comedy 
at  the  Palais-Royal,  he  never  even  published  it;  and  it 
did  not  appear  in  print  until  La  Grange  made  ready  the 
complete  edition  of  Moliere's  works  nine  years  after  the 
dramatist's  death. 

Ill 

When  Moliere  turned  aside  from  his  own  projects  to 
improvise  the  'Amants  Magnifiques'  for  the  gratification 
of  the  king,  he  had  his  reasons,  which  are  obvious  enough 


266  MOLIERE 

and  with  which  we  have  now  no  right  to  quarrel.  But  when 
we  recall  that  he  had  then  only  three  scant  years  of  life 
before  him,  we  cannot  help  holding  that  this  was  a  waste 
of  precious  time.  We  do  not  feel  this  in  regard  to  'Mon- 
sieur de  Pourceaugnac'  because  that  superb  farce  exists 
independent  of  all  its  musical  and  terpsichorean  accom- 
paniments, and  because  it  gave  Moliere  a  chance  to  revel 
in  humor  and  to  reveal  his  comic  force  perhaps  more 
liberally  than  in  any  earlier  play.  Nor  have  we  any 
sentiment  of  regret  when  we  come  to  the  next  play  he 
wrote  for  the  king,  a  play  which  unites  the  unflagging 
fun  of 'Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac'  with  the  social  satire 
of  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules/ 

This  was  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,'  a  prose  comedy- 
ballet  in  five  acts,  produced  before  Louis  XIV  at  Cham- 
bord  in  October,  1670,  and  performed  before  the  Parisians 
at  the  Palais-Royal  only  a  month  later.  The  'Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme'  is  like  'Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac'  in 
that  it  is  a  string  of  episodes  rather  than  a  closely  knit 
play.  Here  the  two  later  plays  recall  the  earlier  'Etourdi,' 
but  with  this  significant  difference,  that  the  central  per- 
sonage in  the  later  comedies  is  not  an  arbitrary  figure,  a 
mere  mask,  but  a  living  human  being,  disclosing  new 
aspects  of  his  character  as  he  is  involved  in  the  succession 
of  incidents,  all  chosen  carefully  to  set  off*  his  personal 
peculiarities.  The  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme'  belongs  in 
the  same  group  with  'Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac,'  that  of 
comedy-farces  filled  with  contagious  carnival  gaiety.  Its 
humor  is  more  delicate  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  there  is  a 
more  daring  buffoonery  in  its  most  fantastic  episode. 
And  it  is  superior  not  only  because  the  central  figure  is  of 
a  more  general  interest,  but  also  because  this  figure  is 
surrounded  not  by  the  outline  personages  we  found  in 


'MONSIEUR  DE  POURCEAUGNAC'       267 

'Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac, '  but  by  recognizable  human 
beings. 

As  in  'Tartuffe'  and  the  'Avare*  earlier,  and  as  in  the 
'Femmes  Savantes'  later,  Moliere  introduces  us  into  the 
life  of  a  single  family  and  exhibits  before  us  once  more 
the  disintegrating  effects  of  folly.  The  burgher  who 
wishes  to  turn  gentleman  is  the  worthy  Monsieur  Jour- 
dain,  a  typical  tradesman,  such  a  man  as  Moliere  must 
have  met  often  enough  in  his  father's  shop.  So  solidly 
has  Moliere  drawn  the  portrait  of  Jourdain  and  so  com- 
pletely has  he  realized  the  burgher  of  Paris  in  his  home 
life,  that  some  commentators  have  seen  fit  to  regret  that 
Moliere  to  please  the  king  hurriedly  debased  into  farce  a 
subject  he  must  have  intended  to  treat  in  a  comedy  of  a 
more  exalted  kind.  The  history  of  the  piece  proves  that 
this  suggestion  has  no  foundation  in  fact,  since  the  play 
was  called  into  being  specially  to  lead  up  to  its  most  extrav- 
agant episode,  that  caricaturing  the  manners  and  customs 
of  the  Turks.  There  had  been  an  unworthy  envoy  from 
Turkey  a  few  months  earlier;  a  returned  traveller  had  also 
amused  Louis  XIV  with  a  playful  account  of  oriental  life; 
and  these  things  moved  the  monarch  to  ask  Moliere  for  a 
piece  which  should  introduce  the  parody  of  a  Turkish 
ceremony.  It  seems  likely  therefore  that  the  author 
planned  at  first  to  prepare  a  farce  akin  to  'Monsieur  de 
Pourceaugnac/  an  easy  comic  imbroglio  leading  up  to  the 
required  burlesque  of  oriental  procedure,  and  that  as  he 
worked  on  the  play  he  became  more  and  more  interested 
in  his  subject  until  he  insensibly  gave  to  what  was  origi- 
nally a  farce  the  larger  outlook  of  loftier  comedy. 

Monsieur  Jourdain  (who  was  of  course  impersonated 
by  Moliere  himself)  has  a  wife,  Madame  Jourdain,  and  a 
daughter  Lucile  (acted  by  Moliere's  wife).  The  house- 


268  MOLIERE 

hold  is  completed  by  Nicole,,  a  quick-witted  and  plain- 
spoken  serving  maid,  own  cousin  to  the  Dorine  of  'Tar- 
tuffe/  Lucile  is  beloved  by  Cleonte,  who  has  a  valet 
Covielle.  The  wealthy  burgher  is  ambitious  to  rise  above 
his  station  in  life;  he  would  like  to  be  a  gentleman  and  he 
is  striving  to  fit  himself  for  association  with  gentlemen. 
He  has  a  music-master,  a  dancing-master  and  a  fencing- 
master.  He  is  taking  lessons  also  from  a  master  of  phi- 
losophy, who  is  imparting  to  him  the  elements  of  grammar 
and  rhetoric.  The  dancing-master  gets  into  a  dispute 
with  the  music-master  as  to  which  of  them  follows  the 
nobler  calling;  and  the  fencing-master  holds  them  both 
in  contempt,  only  to  be  crushed  in  turn  by  the  superior 
contempt  of  the  master  of  philosophy. 

We  are  shown  Jourdain  at  his  daily  tasks,  learning  to 
dance  and  to  fence.  We  are  present  when  the  master  of 
philosophy  explains  scientifically  how  to  pronounce  the 
letters  of  the  alphabet  that  Jourdain  has  been  able  to 
utter  accurately  since  his  childhood.  We  listen  while 
Jourdain  consults  his  teacher  as  to  the  proper  phrasing 
for  a  little  compliment  he  wishes  to  pay  a  certain  mar- 
quise. Dorimene  is  the  name  of  this  lady;  and  Jourdain 
has  been  introduced  to  her  by  a  certain  Dorante,  an  im- 
poverished nobleman,  who  is  flattering  the  tradesman's 
social  ambition  and  taking  care  to  get  well  paid  for  his 
advice  and  assistance.  Dorante  is  in  love  withJDonmene, 
and,  being  too  poor  himself  to  entertain  her,  he  persuades 
Jourdain  to  provide  a  banquet  for  her.  But  this  feast, 
which  gives  Jourdain  the  pleasure  of  seeing  at  his  table 
two  persons  of  quality,  is  rudely  interrupted  by  the  pro- 
tests of  Madame  Jourdain,  who  puts  to  flight  the  insulted 
Dorimene. 

And  when  Moliere  had  thoroughly  exposed  the  foolish- 


'MONSIEUR  DE  POURCEAUGNAC'       269 

ness  of  the  ambitious  burgher,  his  ignorance  and  his 
credulity,  he  goes  on  swiftly  to  the  scene  for  the  sake  of  . 
which  the  play  was  composed.  Covielle,  the  valet  of 
Cleonte,  enters  in  disguise  to  inform  Jourdain  that  the  son 
of  the  Grand  Turk  is  in  Paris  and  that  he  has  fallen  in 
love  with  Lucile.  As  it  would  be  improper  for  the  son 
of  the  Grand  Turk  to  marry  the  daughter  of  a  man  of^ 
inferior  station,  the  oriental  suitor  proposes  to  raise  Jour- 
dain to  the  rank  of  "Mamamouchi."  ,Cleonte  disguises 
himself  as  the  son  of  the  Grand  Turk;  and  then  follows\ 
a  scene  of  indescribable  fun — the  ceremony  of  conferring 
an  oriental  title  upon  the  aspiring  tradesman,  a  ceremony 
commingled  of  music  and  dancing.  Cleonte,  as  the  son 
of  the  Grand  Turk,  comes  to  claim  his  bride,  and  Lucile, 
as  soon  as  she  recognizes  her  lover,  accepts  him.  Dori- 
mene  and  Dorante  promptly  agree  to  get  married  also. 
And  the  piece  ends  pleasantly,  with  Jourdain  still  absurdly 
happy  in  his  new  honor.  •£*  dljUJt 

As  a  play  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme'  is  a  curious 
nondescript;  it  has  three  acts  of  character-comedy  worthy 
of  comparison  with  the  best  that  Moliere  had  given  us  in 
other  pieces;  and  then  it  has  two  acts  of  extravagance, 
of  buffoonery,  of  grotesque  exaggeration,  filled  with  un- 
hesitating humor,  but  scarcely  in  keeping  with  the  more 
logical  and  artistic  scenes  with  which  the  comedy  com- 
menced. Shakspere,  in  the  'Merry  Wives/  had  also  to 
finish  out  a  farcical  comedy  with  humorously  fantastic 
spectacle;  and  he  too  was  then  obeying  a  royal  com- 
mand. And  Menander  had  not  hesitated  to  bring  into 
one  of  his  plays  a  band  of  comic  dancers,  more  or  less 
unrelated  to  the  action,  but  useful  in  filling  the  inter-acts 
in  the  frolic.  In  intent  and  in  temper  the  'Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme'  resembled  'Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac/ 


270  MOLIERE  . 

but  not  in  method.  The  earlier  comedy-ballet  has  a 
straightforward  story  which  never  swerves  aside.  The 
later  has  a  first  and  a  second  act,  in  which  we  are  shown 
only  Jourdain  in  the  hands  of  his  various  instructors  and 
in  which  we  get  well  acquainted  with  him;  and  it  is  not 
until  the  third  act  that  we  first  catch  sight  of  the  Cleonte- 
Lucile  love-story  and  of  the  Dorante-Dorimene  intrigue. 
And  this  recalls  the  fragmentary  method  rather  of  the 
'Avare'  than  the  logical  construction  of  'Monsieur  de 
Pourceaugnac/ 

The  explanation  of  this  sudden  descent  of  a  philosophic 
comedy  into  what  is  almost  pantomimic  farce  must  be 
sought  in  its  origin,  in  the  circumstances  of  its  first  per- 
formance, when  it  served  as  the  excuse  for  the  interludes 
of  song  and  dance.  Where  we  now  think  of  Moliere's 
play  as  distended  and  possibly  as  debased  by  its  spectac- 
ular accessories,  his  contemporaries  thought  of  the  dances 
chiefly.  They  even  recorded  the  production  of  the  ballet 
episodes  "accompanied  by  a  comedy."  Moliere  knew 
what  was  expected  of  him;  and  however  humble  the 
task,  he  accomplished  it  completely  to  the  king's  satis- 
faction. We  have  cause  for  congratulation  that  he  gave 
good  measure  and  that  he  did  more  than  was  then 
demanded  of  him. 

Disconcerting  as  this  hybrid  of  comedy  and  farce  and 
burlesque  may  be  to  the  critical  analyst,  the  'Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme'  is  one  of  Moliere's  most  characteristic 
plays.  It  contains  not  a  few  of  his  most  ingenious  scenes, 
at  once  humorous  and  veracious.  Monsieur  Jourdain 
himself  i^  a  never-failing  joy  in  his  innocent  fatuity.  He 
is  a  constant  source  of  unquenchable  laughter  as  we  be- 
,  hold  him  delighted  to  discover  that  he  has  spoken  prose 
all  his  life  without  knowing  it,  and  as  we  see  him,  pricked 


\ 


'MONSIEUR  DE  POURCE AUGNAC '       271 

by  the  foil  in  the  hands  of  Nicole,  protesting  that  she  is 
not  fencing  according  to  the  rules.  We  may  laugh  at 
him  incessantly,  but  at  the  same  time  we  like  him.  There  x 
is  no  harshness  in  Moliere's  painting,  none  of  the  ferocity 
which  marks  the  portrayal  of  the  miser,  for  example.  In 
Monsieur  Jourdain,  Moliere  is  showing  up  the  folly  of  a 
member  of  the  middle  class,  just  as  he  had  shown  up  the 
wickedness  of  a  representative  of  the  nobility  in  Don 
Juan.  He  surveyed  the  society  around  him  with  an 
unprejudiced  eye,  and  he  held  no  brief  even  for  the  class 
to  which  he  himself  belonged.  Yet  he  took  care  to  set 
over  against  his  foolish  burgher  a  self-seeking  man  of 
quality,  Dorante,  who  was  little  better  than  an  adventurer, 
not  to  call  him  a  swindler.  And  this  unflattering  portrait 
was  not  calculated  to  win  favor  from  the  courtiers,  before 
whom  it  was  first  presented. 

The  story  of  the  practical  joke  played  on  the  unfortu- 
nate Jourdain  is  sustained  by  the  love  affair  of  Jourdain' s 
daughter.  In  setting  forth  this  true  love  which  did  not 
run  smooth,  the  author  introduces  into  this  comedy  a 
love-tifF  very  like  the  lover's  quarrels  ending  with  a  happy 
reconciliation,  with  which  he  had  already  enriched  the 
earlier  'Depit  Amoureux'  and  'TartufFe'.  It  may  be 
noted  that  Moliere  took  occasion  to  put  into  the  mouth  of 
Cleonte  a  physical  description  of  his  own  wife,  who  played 
Lucile,  and  to  give  the  lover  an  explanation  of  her  charm 
and  fascination.  This  Moliere  did,  although  husband 
and  wife  were  then  living  apart;  and  perhaps  this  may 
have  helped  to  bring  about  the  reconciliation  which  took 
place  in  the  final  years  of  Moliere's  life. 


272  i  MOLIERE 

IV 

It  has  seemed  best  to  link  together  here  the  '  Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme'  and  'Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac/  since 
these  two  comedy-ballets  have  many  characteristics  in 
common.  But  this  has  necessitated  the  temporary  neglect 
of  another  of  Moliere's  works,  in  which  he  adventured 
himself  in  a  new  field.  He  was  a  dramatist,  writing  prose 
or  verse  as  he  saw  fit  and  as  the  occasion  demanded,  and 
yet  once  and  once  only  he  came  forward  as  a  poet,  pure 
and  simple,  dealing  with  a  theme  which  had  no  connection 
with  the  drama.  It  is  true  that  he  had  strayed  into  the 
lyric  in  the  sonnet  to  La  Mothe  Le  Vayer,  and  in  the 
stanzas  thanking  the  king  for  his  pension.  But  now  at 
the  call  of  friendship  he  risked  a  longer  poem,  didactic 
and  descriptive,  in  accordance  with  the  tradition  estab- 
lished by  Horace's  epistle  on  the  'Art  of  Poetry/  This 
poem  was  entitled  'La  Gloire  du  Val-de-Grace.'  He  had 
long  been  intimate  with  Pierre  Mignard,  perhaps  the  fore- 
most painter  in  France.  They  had  met  in  the  south  while 
Moliere  was  still  a  stroller;  and  their  friendship  had  be- 
come closer  when  the  painter  returned  to  Paris  from  Rome. 

The  church  of  Val-de-Grace  in  Paris  was  due  to  the 
piety  of  the  queen-mother.  Begun  in  1645,  lt  was  not 
completed  until  1665;  and  it  had  a  dome,  the  decoration 
of  which  had  been  confided  to  Mignard,  who  adorned  it 
with  an  elaborate  fresco.  This  painting  seems  to  have 
been  finished  somewhere  between  1663  and  1666.  At 
this  time  there  was  a  rivalry  between  Mignard  and  Le 
Brun,  who  was  sustained  by  the  powerful  Colbert.  One 
of  Colbert's  secretaries  was  Charles  Perrault;  and  in  1668 
he  put  forth  a  poem  on  painting  which  was  one  long  paean 
of  praise  for  Le  Brun,  who  is  called  the  only  perfect 


1  MONSIEUR  DE  POURCEAUGNAC'       273 

artist  of  the  time.  Perrault  was  not  important  as  a  poet, 
and  his  verses  are  now  faded  and  forgotten.  But  when 
they  were  fresh,  they  were  a  challenge  to  the  friends  of 
Mignard;  and  Moliere  promptly  stepped  into  the  lists. 
Early  in  1669  he  came  to  the  defense  of  his  friend  with 
his  'Gloire  du  Val-de-Grace,'  which  was  printed  and 
published  in  exactly  the  same  form  as  that  chosen  by 
Perrault  for  his  rimed  eulogy  of  Le  Brun. 

As  it  happened,  Du  Fresnoy,  an  associate  of  Mignard's 
in  the  decoration  of  the  dome  of  the  queen-mother's  church, 
had  written  a  Latin  poem  on  the  graphic  art,  which  ap- 
peared about  this  time  both  in  the  original  and  in  a  French 
translation.  These  Latin  verses  Moliere  utilized  now 
and  again  in  the  preparation  of  his  own  poem,  although 
he  intended  not  so  much  a  discussion  of  the  whole  art  of 
painting  as  a  panegyric  of  Mignard's  fresco.  He  set 
forth  the  principles  of  the  painter's  craft  as  these  were 
practised  by  Mignard,  who  had  absorbed  much  from  his 
prolonged  study  of  the  Italian  masters,  and  who  was 
therefore  not  wholly  in  accord  with  the  French  tradition 
of  that  time.  And  incidentally,  Moliere  took  occasion 
to  dwell  on  the  fundamental  differences  between  the  art 
of  painting  in  oil  and  the  art  of  painting  in  fresco. 

Although  Moliere's  poem  is  not  that  one  of  his  works 
which  posterity  has  most  cherished  and  although  it  is 
now  little  read  even  by  its  author's  most  ardent  admirers, 
it  has  won  praise  from  critics  as  competent  as  Boileau 
and  Sainte-Beuve.  Both  of  them  pointed  out  that  in 
his  distinction  between  the  methods  of  the  two  classes  of 
painters  Moliere  was  perhaps  unconsciously  indicating 
the  essential  quality  of  his  own  genius  as  a  dramatist, 
whose  art  demands  a  daring  swiftness,  like  that  of  the 
painter  in  fresco. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

FROM    'PSYCHE'    TO    THE    'COMTESSE 
D'ESCARBAGNAS' 

I 

IN  the  'Gloire  du  Val-de-Grace'  Moliere  had  unex- 
pectedly proved  his  possession  of  the  power  of  writing 
verse  of  the  didactic  and  descriptive  type,  as  he  had  a 
little  earlier  and  with  equal  unexpectedness  revealed  in 
the  'Amphitryon'  his  ability  to  attain  a  lyric  elevation 
unattempted  earlier.  And  now  to  please  the  king  once 
more  he  disclosed  another  unexpected  gift,  an  ingenious 
facility  in  dealing  with  a  theme  as  lyric  as  that  of  the 
'Amphitryon/  but  without  any  of  the  elements  of  humor 
—a  theme  indeed  almost  as  tragic  as  that  was  comic. 
There  was  a  gorgeous  piece  of  scenery  representing  the 
fiery  realm  of  Pluto,  long  reserved  in  the  royal  storehouse; 
and  Louis  XIV  asked  Moliere  to  prepare  a  spectacular 
play  in  which  this  might  be  utilized  and  into  which  vari- 
ous mechanical  effects  might  be  appropriately  introduced. 

The  result  of  this  request  from  the  king  was  'Psyche/ 
a  tragedy-ballet  in  five  acts,  performed  frequently  at  the 
palace  of  the  Tuileries  in  the  winter  of  1671  and  brought 
out  at  the  Palais-Royal  late  in  the  summer  of  the  same 
year.  Tragedy-ballet  is  what  the  author  called  his  piece; 
but  we  should  describe  it  to-day  as  a  grand  opera.  In 
planning  this  medley  of  scenery  and  of  music,  of  heroic 
acting  and  of  dancing,  Moliere  was  a  precursor  of  Scribe, 

274 


'PSYCHE'  275 

who  devised  the  librettos  for  Meyerbeer,  and  of  Wagner, 
who  wrote  both  the  book  and  the  score  of  his  musical 
dramas.  In  Moliere's  piece  we  can  perceive  the  same 
massive  simplicity  which  we  observe  in  these  modern 
operas,  the  same  starkness  of  outline  and  the  same  desire 
to  profit  by  every  possibility  of  pleasing  the  eye  as  well  as 
the  ear.  The  story,  which  lent  itself  abundantly  to  its 
musical  and  mechanical  accompaniments,  was  of  Moliere's 
own  choosing;  and  it  may  have  been  suggested  to  him 
by  the  success  of  La  Fontaine's  little  tale  which  had  ap- 
peared only  two  years  earlier. 

The  graceful  legend  which  he  had  selected  enabled  him 
to  construct  a  play  of  a  kind  never  before  essayed  by  him. 
He  accomplished  his  task  so  as  to  prove  his  perfect  un- 
derstanding of  its  requirements.  The  drama  itself,  with 
all  its  struggle  of  contending  desires,  its  artfully  con- 
trasted characters,  its  progressive  action,  is  developed  less 
for  its  own  sake  than  for  the  sake  of  its  spectacular  pos- 
sibilities. The  Italian  artist-engineers  of  the  Renascence 
had  carried  the  use  of  mechanical  devices  to  an  elaborate 
perfection  scarcely  surpassed  in  the  theaters  of  our  own 
time,  which  are  superior  chiefly  in  the  possession  of  facili- 
ties for  ampler  illumination.  In  planning  'Psyche'  and  in 
setting  its  successive  episodes  on  the  stage,  Moliere  availed 
himself  of  the  utmost  that  these  artist-engineers  could  do, 
both  as  scene-painters  and  as  inventors  of  ingenious  tricks. 
He  adorned  his  play  with  all  conceivable  pomp,  scatter- 
ing through  it  transformations  and  conflagrations,  intro- 
ducing a  sea  of  fire  with  flaming  waves  in  incessant 
agitation,  and  exhibiting  before  the  marvelling  spectators 
Venus  descending  from  the  upper  ether,  Jupiter  appearing 
in  mid  air  mounted  on  his  eagle,  and  at  the  end  Cupid 
and  Psyche  wafted  up  into  the  skies  by  invisible  power. 


276  MOLIERE 

The  music  was  composed  by  the  wily  Florentine,  Lulli, 
who  is  really  the  founder  of  grand  opera  in  France;  and 
the  words  of  the  songs  and  concerted  pieces  were  written 
by  Quinault.  Moliere  himself  invented  and  constructed 
the  plot,  and  he  is  responsible  for  the  complete  scenario. 
But  the  king  was  in  a  hurry,  as  usual;  and  to  get  the  play 
ready  for  the  carnival  season  the  author  had  to  call  in 
the  aid  of  collaborators,  not  only  Quinault  but  also  Cor- 
neille.  Moliere  was  able  himself  to  write  only  the  first  act 
and  the  opening  scenes  of  the  second  and  third  acts;  and 
Corneille  undertook  the  versification  of  the  rest  of  the  five 
acts.  This  division  of  the  work  may  have  been  fortuitous, 
but  it  was  fortunate  also,  since  Moliere  passed  the  pen 
to  Corneille  at  the  moment  when  the  tone  of  the  play  had 
to  rise  and  when  there  was  need  of  a  fuller  lyric  note. 

Thus  it  is  that  we  have  in  ' Psyche'  one  of  the  rare 
instances  in  France  under  Louis  XIV  of  that  dramatic 
collaboration  which  was  common  in  England  under  Eliz- 
abeth and  James.  In  the  plays  of  the  English  dramatic 
poets  who  labored  in  combination  we  are  often  left  in 
doubt  as  to  the  respective  shares  of  .the  several  partners 
in  the  enterprise.  In  this  French  example  of  conjoint 
playmaking  we  are  not  reduced  to  guess  at  the  contribu- 
tion of  each  with  only  the  hazardous  support  of  internal 
evidence.  Fundamentally,  the  whole  play  is  Moliere's; 
the  conduct  of  the  story  is  entirely  his;  and  Corneille's 
sole  duty  was  to  clothe  with  words  the  action  of  the  later 
acts.  Most  of  the  actual  writing  must  be  credited  to 
the  elder  poet;  but  he  was  only  expressing  in  words 
the  plot  planned  by  the  younger  poet.  Corneille  was 
then  well  past  sixty  years  of  age,  yet  he  showed  himself 
capable  here  of  recapturing  the  lyric  fervor  of  his  youth, 
commingled  with  the  sonorous  eloquence  of  his  maturity. 


'PSYCHE'  277 

In  the  first  few  years  after  Moliere's  return  to  Paris 
he  seems  not  to  have  been  on  the  best  of  terms  with  Cor- 
neille,  although  it  was  in  a  tragedy  of  the  elder  dramatist 
that  the  younger  had  made  his  first  appearance  before  the 
king.  Quite  possibly  the  author  of  the  'Menteur'  did 
not  altogether  relish  the  more  realistic  comedy  toward 
which  the  author  of  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  was  con- 
stantly tending.  Quite  possibly  again  Moliere  had  Cor- 
neille  in  mind  when  he  had  declared  in  the  'Critique  de 
1'Ecole  des  Femmes'  that  comedy  was  really  more  difficult 
than  tragedy.  But  Moliere  was  appreciative  and  gener- 
ous; and  in  1667  he  had  produced  'Attila,'  paying  two 
thousand  livres  for  it,  a  very  liberal  sum  for  the  time. 
And  in  1670  he  had  brought  out  the  'Tite  et  Berenice/ 
which  Corneille  had  written  in  rivalry  with  the  'Berenice' 
of  Racine,  acted  simultaneously  at  the  Hotel  de  Bour- 
gogne. 

Perhaps  there  is  more  than  a  hint  of  irony  in  the  fact 
that  this  interesting  collaboration  of  the  founder  of  French 
tragedy  with  the  founder  of  French  comedy  was  simply 
the  result  of  the  king's  unwillingness  to  let  a  spectacular 
scene  lie  too  long  unemployed.  Whatever  their  differ- 
ences may  have  been  in  the  remoter  past,  the  elder  poet 
did  not  scamp  the  work  he  contributed  to  the  opera  which 
the  younger  poet  had  devised.  He  found  no  difficulty  in 
writing  verses  as  free  and  as  lightly  lyric  as  those  which 
Moliere  had  used  in  the  'Amphitryon'  and  in  the  first  act 
of  '  Psyche '  itself.  And  there  is  a  glow  of  genuine  senti- 
ment in  the  declaration  of  ardent  devotion  which  Cupid 
makes  to  Psyche.  Beneath  the  frigid  phrases  of  the  vo- 
cabulary of  contemporary  gallantry  which  both  Corneille 
and  Moliere  were  forced  to  employ,  since  they  were  their 
own  contemporaries  and  since  they  had  to  hit  the  taste 


278  MOLIERE 

of  their  audiences,  it  is  easy  to  feel  the  warmth  of  sincere 
emotion.  And  it  is  not  harder  for  us  to  recover  the  real 
sentiment  which  animates  this  outworn  diction  than  it  is  for 
us  to  substitute  real  persons  and  real  places  for  the  vague 
"swains"  and  the  intangible  "bowers"  that  arrest  our 
attention  in  the  English  poetry  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
'Psyche'  was  performed  repeatedly  before  Louis  XIV 
during  the  carnival,  but  it  was  not  represented  at  the 
Palais-Royal  until  late  in  the  summer.  The  stage  of 
that  playhouse  was  not  capable  of  the  spectacular  effects 
easily  attainable  in  the  more  sumptuous  theater  of  the 
Tuileries.  The  Italian  comedians  still  shared  the  Palais- 
Royal  with  Moliere's  company;  as  it  happened  they  were 
equally  anxious  to  be  able  to  gratify  the  public  liking  for 
transformations  and  mechanical  effects.  Therefore  in 
the  spring,  at  the  joint  expense  of  the  two  companies, 
the  stage  of  the  Palais-Royal  was  rebuilt  so  as  to  permit 
a  more  elaborate  scenic  splendor.  Even  then  it  was  not 
possible  to  present  'Psyche'  with  the  amplitude  of  spec- 
tacle which  had  characterized  its  performance  in  the 
royal  palace.  Still  the  Parisian  playgoers  were  satisfied, 
and  more  than  satisfied,  with  the  entertainment  which  was 
set  before  them.  During  the  remaining  two  years  of 
Moliere's  life,  'Psyche'  was  acted  more  than  eighty  times 
to  nightly  receipts  that  did  not  vary  greatly  from  a  thou- 
sand livres,  more  than  twice  the  average  of  those  taken 
at  the  performances  of  the  'Misanthrope.'  It  would  be 
pleasant  to  believe  that  this  unprecedented  success  was 
due  to  the  interesting  collaboration  of  two  of  the  three 
foremost  living  dramatists  of  France;  but  the  facts  forbid, 
and  the  credit  must  be  given  rather  to  the  machinery,  the 
music  and  the  costumes,  than  to  the  captivating  charm 
and  the  airy  grace  of  the  lyrics  of  Moliere  and  Corneille. 


'PSYCHE'  279 

Perhaps,  however,  it  is  wholesome  for  us  to  be  forcibly 
reminded  once  more  that  the  drama  does  not  live  by 
literature  alone,  and  that  it  can  never  be  considered  en- 
tirely apart  from  the  demands  of  the  actual  theater. 


ii 

Between  the  performances  of  'Psyche'  before  the  king 
and  its  appearance  before  the  citizens  of  Paris,  Moliere 
brought  out  at  the  Palais-Royal  the  'Fourberies  de  Sea- 
pin/  a  three  act  comedy  in  prose,  first  acted  toward  the 
end  of  May.  In  this  swift  sequence  of  joyous  episodes 
Moliere  returned  for  the  last  time  to  the  formula  of  the 
comedy-of-masks,  although  it  was  from  Terence  that  he 
took  over  the  outline  of  his  story. 

Scapin,  the  part  which  Moliere  impersonated,  is  simply 
Mascarille  under  another  name;  he  is  the  same  rascal 
of  infinite  resource  who  is  called  Hali  in  the  'Sicilien/ 
Sbrigani  in  'Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac'  and  Covielle 
in  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme.'  The  successive  situa- 
tions in  which  he  exhibits  his  incomparable  roguery  and 
his  unparalleled  audacity  might  any  one  of  them  have 
been  included  in  the  'Etourdi.'  In  the  earliest  of  Mo- 
Here's  comic  pieces  on  the  plan  of  the  Italian  comedies, 
Mascarille  plays  a  series  of  tricks  on  the  father  of  his 
young  master,  so  that  the  youthful  lover  can  marry  the 
maiden  of  his  choice;  and  in  the  latest  of  the  dramatic 
pieces  on  this  ever  useful  model  Scapin  plays  a  series  of 
tricks  on  two  fathers,  so  that  two  enamored  young  fellows 
may  be  able  to  wed  the  two  girls  they  have  fallen  in  love 
with.  The  method  is  identical,  however  dissimilar  the 
separate  deceits  may  be  in  themselves. 

But  the  'Fourberies  de  Scapin'  is  not  only  more  ingeni-  J 


a8o  MOLIERE 

ous  in  its  trickery  than  the  'Etourdi,'  it  is  also  less  obvi- 
ously mechanical  and  therefore  less  fatiguing  on  the  stage 
to-day.  Its  humor  is  richer  and  its  gaiety  is  more  sponta- 
neous. Of  course  the  fun  is  the  result  mainly  of  the 
situations,  as  must  ever  be  the  case  in  farce,  but  it  is 
sustained  by  a  more  obvious  vivacity  and  veracity  of 
character-drawing  than  can  be  found  in  Moliere's  earlier 
handling  of  a  kindred  theme.  The  two  fathers  whom 
Scapin  befools,  one  after  the  other,  are  not  mere  pro- 
file figures;  they  are  genuine  human  beings,  solidly  set 
on  their  feet,  even  if  they  are  not  as  searchingly  delin- 
eated as  the  chief  characters  in  Moliere's  higher  come- 
dies. Perhaps  even  the  two  young  couples,  the  necessary 
supporters  of  the  story,  are  sketched  in  with  a  firmer 
touch  and  a  more  sympathetic  sentiment  than  their  pred- 
ecessors in  Moliere's  first  pieces  on  the  pattern  of  the 
comedy-of-masks. 

The  plot  is  brought  to  a  happy  conclusion  with  con- 
temptuous suddenness  when  the  fun  has  been  carried  far 
enough.  The  two  girls  turn  out  to  be  the  very  brides 
whom  the  two  fathers  had  picked  out  for  their  two  sons. 
This  arbitrary  cutting  of  the  dramatic  knot  is  quite  in 
keeping  with  the  frank  artificiality  of  the  whole  play, 
which  is  as  remote  as  possible  from  reality.  As  we  laugh 
at  the  humorous  imbroglio  we  know  that  we  are  beholding 
a  fantasy  only;  we  know  that  these  things  never  happened 
in  this  workaday  world,  and  that  they  could  not  happen. 
We  are  aware  also  that  they  should  not  happen,  since  it 
is  only  the  flagrant  unreality  of  the  action  which  prevents 
us  from  applying  the  standards  of  ordinary  morality. 
If  we  take  this  play  seriously,  then  the  conduct  of  the  sons 
is  inexcusable,  and  the  tricks  they  allow  Scapin  to  play 
on  their  fathers  are  indefensible. 


'PSYCHE'  281 

We  might  go  further  and  say  that  it  is  only  the  lack  of 
any  relation  to  actual  life  which  prevents  us  from  pro- 
testing against  the  physical  and  moral  indignities  which 
the  unscrupulous  valet  puts  upon  the  two  old  men,  each 
in  his  turn.  Considered  as  a  picture  of  existence  as  it 
is,  as  a  portrayal  of  any  possible  society,  the  *  Fourberies 
de  Scapin'  is  as  detestable  in  its  cruelty  as  that  other 
mirth-provoking  drama,  the  tragedy  of  Punch-and-Judy. 
Perhaps  this  final  farce  of  Moliere's  can  be  described  not 
unfairly  as  a  Punch-and-Judy  piece  for  grown-ups;  its 
characters  move  in  a  kindred  world  of  make-believe  and 
they  are  as  irresponsible  to  the  moral  law.  To  apply 
the  code  of  common  sense  or  of  common  humanity  would 
be  as  absurd  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  And  per- 
haps it  is  partly  to  create  this  atmosphere  of  frankly 
fantastic  unreality  that  Moliere  is  willingly  careless  in 
the  logical  conduct  of  his  plot,  that  he  lays  his  scene 
in  an  impossible  Naples,  and  that  he  brings  his  story 
to  its  conclusion  by  a  couple  of  impossible  coincidences. 

He  carries  the  play  off  with  a  high  hand,  with  abundant 
animal  spirits,  with  no  suggestion  of  effort  and  with  no 
sign  of  fatigue.  The  little  drama  may  be  mature  in  the 
amplitude  of  its  humor,  but  it  is  splendidly  youthful  in 
its  gaiety,  its  celerity,  its  brio.  In  robustness  of  comic 
effect  there  are  few  of  his  plays  superior  to  the  'Four- 
beries de  Scapin.'  And  perhaps  no  single  scene  in  all 
Moliere  is  more  amusing  than  that  in  which  Scapin  per- 
suades one  of  the  fathers  that  his  son  is  held  as  a  captive 
on  a  Turkish  galley,  the  owner  of  which  insists  on  a  large 
ransom.  There  is  an  almost  pathetic  humor  in  the 
accent  of  plaintive  protest  in  the  old  man's  reiteration  of 
his  question  as  to  why  his  son  ever  went  on  board  that 
galley.  The  familiar  device  of  the  catchword,  recurring 


282  MOLIERE 

in  the  dialogue  at  artfully  chosen  intervals,  is  very  old, 
so  old  indeed  that  it  is  perhaps  remotely  related  to  the 
device  of  the  refrain  in  the  popular  ballads.  Moliere  did 
not  often  avail  himself  of  this  facile  device  for  awaken- 
ing laughter;  but  when  he  did  condescend  to  employ  it 
(in  this  play  and  earlier  in  the  'Avare,'  where  Harpagon 
insists  on  the  willingness  of  an  elderly  suitor  to  marry  his 
daughter  without  a  dowry)  he  gets  out  of  it  the  last  drop 
of  fun  that  can  be  squeezed  from  it,  and  he  also  succeeds 
in  making  it  a  revelation  of  essential  character. 

It  is  in  the  'Fourberies  de  Scapin'  and  in  *  Monsieur 
de  Pourceaugnac'  that  Moliere  most  clearly  exhibits  his 
familiarity  with  the  technicalities  of  the  law,  with  the 
manifold  delays  of  its  procedure  and  with  the  manifest 
chicanery  of  its  practice.  He  does  not  recur  to  the  attack 
again  and  again  as  he  does  in  his  assault  on  the  practi- 
tioners of  the  healing  art;  but  he  is  outspoken  in  his 
exposure  of  the  corruption  which  characterized  the  courts 
of  his  day.  In  its  way  the  contemptuous  slap  which 
Scapin  bestows  upon  the  legal  profession  is  quite  as 
significant  as  the  fiery  outburst  of  Alceste  when  he  hears 
that  he  has  lost  his  lawsuit.  And  in  his  very  last  play, 
the  'Malade  Imaginaire/  Moliere  introduces  a  wily  petti- 
fogger who  is  willing  enough  to  turn  the  law  dishonestly 
to  the  advantage  of  his  unscrupulous  client. 

Ill 

The  'Fourberies  de  Scapin'  had  been  written  for  the 
people  of  Paris.  Moliere's  next  piece  was  written  for 
the  king  once  more.  This  was  the  'Comtesse  d'Escar- 
bagnas/  a  one  act  comedy  in  prose,  presented  before 
Louis  XIV  in  December,  1671,  and  acted  at  the  Palais- 


'PSYCHE'  283 

Royal  in  July,  1672.  It  is  only  a  slight  sketch,  written 
to  order,  to  justify  the  revival  of  the  more  effective  dances 
from  the  earlier  'Ballet  des  Ballets/  It  is  the  least  im- 
portant of  all  Moliere's  pieces,  excepting  only  that  '  Pas- 
torale Comique'  which  he  did  not  care  to  preserve.  It 
is  the  only  play  of  his  which  did  not  contain  a  part  for 
his  own  acting.  It  may  be  dismissed  as  a  hasty  sketch, 
dashed  off  hurriedly  to  meet  the  king's  demand.  Its 
author  thought  so  little  of  it  that  he  never  published  it. 

Yet  nothing  of  Moliere's  is  negligible.  In  this  per- 
functory piece  of  work  he  gives  us  an  amusing  vignette 
of  provincial  manners.  The  Comtesse  d'Escarbagnas 
is  an  ignorant  and  pretentious  widow  who  has  paid  a 
flying  visit  to  the  capital,  and  who  has  returned  to  the 
little  town  where  she  lives  even  more  affected  and  absurd 
than  before.  She  has  the  complacent  ignorance  of  Mrs. 
Malaprop,  and  like  Mrs.  Malaprop  she  is  easily  led  to 
believe  that  the  attentions  of  the  wooer  of  a  younger 
woman  are  meant  for  herself. 

The  unpretending  little  piece  contains  two  other  figures 
from  the  gallery  of  provincial  types  that  Moliere  had 
collected  during  his  youthful  wanderings.  One  of  these 
is  a  stupid  and  mercenary  judge;  and  in  presenting  this 
character  Moliere  avails  himself  of  the  opportunity  to 
express  again  his  low  opinion  of  the  law  as  it  was  prac- 
tised in  his  day.  Another  of  these  subsidiary  characters, 
etched  quickly  by  a  few  summary  strokes,  is  a  rude  receiver 
of  taxes,  ill-mannered  and  overbearing — a  first  outline  of 
the  predatory  financier,  whose  full-length  portrait  one  of 
Moliere's  followers,  Le  Sage,  was  later  to  paint  in  his 
'Turcaret.' 


284  MOLIERE 

IV 

Perhaps  it  would  be  possible  to  find  evidences  of  fatigue 
in  the  'Comtesse  d'Escarbagnas/  at  least  in  the  author's 
unwillingness  to  take  trouble  to  make  the  most  of  his 
material  and  to  set  the  carefully  observed  characters  in  a 
story  that  might  be  better  worth  while.  That  Moliere 
should  now  begin  to  be  a  little  weary  is  not  to  be  won- 
dered at.  When  he  brought  out  this  little  play  it  was 
only  thirteen  years  since  he  had  returned  to  Paris;  but  in 
that  brief  space  he  had  produced  twenty-six  other  plays, 
of  which  half-a-dozen  were  in  five  acts.  He  had  acted 
incessantly;  and  he  had  been  responsible  always  for  the 
prosperity  of  the  company  of  actors  of  which  he  was  the 
chief.  He  had  had  to  turn  aside  from  his  own  work 
repeatedly  to  improvise  comedy-ballets  at  the  behest  of 
the  king.  His  health  was  always  insecure;  and  he  was  not 
happy  in  his  home  life.  However  fiercely  his  ambition 
might  still  burn,  he  had  reason  enough  to  be  tired  of  the 
perpetual  struggle. 

Just  what  his  relations  with  his  father  had  been  we  do 
not  know  with  certainty.  But  the  son  may  well  have 
been  saddened  by  the  father's  death  early  in  1669,  at  the 
ripe  age  of  seventy-six — not  so  much  perhaps  by  the  death 
itself  as  by  the  circumstances  that  accompanied  it.  The 
elder  Poquelin  had  long  survived  his  two  wives  and  he 
had  seen  all  his  children  go  before  him,  except  Moliere. 
He  was  prosperous  when  Moliere's  mother  died — and 
perhaps  his  prosperity  was  in  part  due  to  her  character 
and  to  her  influence.  In  the  years  that  followed,  after 
his  son  left  him  to  become  a  strolling  actor,  his  affairs 
went  from  bad  to  worse.  When  he  died  he  was  poor; 
he  left  few  belongings  and  he  owed  money;  in  fact,  after 


'  PSYCHE'  285 

his  death  one  of  his  debts  was  paid  by  his  son.  It  may 
not  be  safe  to  draw  inferences  as  to  the  character  of  the 
elder  Poquelin  from  the  various  fathers  introduced  by 
Moliere  into  his  many  plays;  and  yet  it  is  to  be  noted 
that  nearly  all  of  these  fathers  are  opinionated,  domineer- 
ing and  selfish.  Of  course,  this  was  the  type  Moliere 
had  found  in  the  Italian  comedy  he  imitated  and  in  the 
Latin  comedy  which  was  his  other  model;  still  there 
may  be  some  slight  significance  in  the  fact  that  only  in 
the  'Femmes  Savantes'  did  he  take  occasion  to  vary  this 
character  and  to  represent  a  father  more  amiable  and  more 
estimable.  It  is  pleasant,  however,  to  recall  here  the 
evidence  that  Moliere  seems  to  have  been  on  good  terms 
with  his  father  and  that  he  willingly  came  to  his  assist- 
ance when  the  elder  Poquelin  was  in  need. 

It  was  two  years  before  the  performance  of  the  'Com- 
tesse  d'Escarbagnas'  that  Moliere  had  lost  his  father. 
And  it  was  shortly  after  the  production  of  that  play  before 
the  king  that  the  death  occurred  of  Madeleine  Bejart, 
with  whom  he  had  been  intimately  associated  ever  since 
he  had  left  his  father's  roof,  nearly  thirty  years  earlier. 
She  had  been  ailing  for  some  time;  and  she  had  created 
no  new  part  in  the  plays  that  Moliere  had  recently  written. 
In  February,  1672,  she  died,  at  the  comparatively  early 
age  of  fifty-four.  She  had  been  the  original  performer 
of  many  of  Moliere's  most  vigorously  drawn  characters, 
of  which  Madelon,  in  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules,'  was  one 
of  the  earliest  and  Dorine,  in  'Tartuffe,'  one  of  the  most 
effective.  A  versatile  actress,  she  was  also  a  woman  of 
much  sagacity  in  business;  and  she  seems  to  have  man- 
aged the  financial  affairs  of  the  company  and  of  Moliere 
himself,  until  long  after  they  had  all  returned  to  Paris. 
She  had  wisely  invested  her  own  share  of  the  profits  of 


286  MOLIERE 

their  theatrical  enterprise;  and  she  was  able  to  leave 
behind  her  a  little  fortune.  By  her  will,  drawn  up  only 
a  few  days  before  her  death,  she  provided  for  a  charitable 
bequest  and  for  masses  for  herself.  She  also  gave  four 
hundred  francs  a  year  for  life  to  her  brother  Louis  and  to 
each  of  her  two  sisters,  Genevieve  and  Armande.  And 
she  designated  the  younger  sister,  Armande,  the  wife  of 
Moliere,  as  her  residuary  legatee. 

A  few  months  before  the  death  of  Madeleine  Bejart  a 
final  reconciliation  had  taken  place  between  Moliere  and 
his  wife.  We  do  not  know  the  exact  date  of  their  agree- 
ing to  live  apart,  nor  do  we  know  the  exact  date  when 
they  made  up  their  differences  at  last.  Probably  this 
reunion  preceded  or  accompanied  a  severe  illness  of  the 
wife  in  the  fall  of  1671,  a  few  weeks  before  the  first  per- 
formance of  the  'Comtesse  d'Escarbagnas.'  Whatever 
the  former  disagreements  between  husband  and  wife 
may  have  been,  they  managed  to  get  along  together  dur- 
ing the  few  remaining  months  of  Moliere's  life.  He 
took  a  house,  which  he  furnished  and  supplied  sump- 
tuously, perhaps  to  gratify  her  desires  and  perhaps  to 
please  his  own  liking  for  luxurious  surroundings. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES' 

I 

To  meet  the  sudden  desires  of  the  king  and  to  keep 
the    Palais-Royal    constantly    supplied    with    new    plays 
Moliere  often  found  himself  forced  to  work  in  a  hurry. 
This  lack  of  leisure  for  the  slow  maturing  of  masterpieces   t 
wherein  he  could  put  forth  his  whole  strength  explains 
why  it  is  that  he  has  left  us  so  few  large  comedies  and  so 
many  comedy-ballets  and  so  many  Italianate  farces.     His 
comic  dramas  are  not  only  surprisingly  varied  in  form, 
they  are  also  surprisingly  unequal  in  scope  and  in  finish. 
It  is  at  most  in  a  scant  half-dozen  of  his  comedies  that 
he  is  able  to  display  his  rich  resources  as  a  dramaturgic 
craftsman  and  his  full  powers  as  a  humorous  psychologist 
Perhaps  almost  half  of  his   thirty  plays   disclose   plainly 
either  the  special  circumstances  of  their  origin  or  else  the 
haste  with  which  they  had  to  be  put  together.     It  might"* 
even  be  maintained  that  there  are  only  two  of  his  loftier"; 
comedies  in  which  he  was  able  to  show  himself  at  the  high-  ^ 
est  and  to  do  justice  to  his  skill  as  a  playmaker,  to  his  gift  - 
of  humor  and  to  his  insight  into  character.     One  of  these  * 
two  is,  of  course,  'TartufFe';  and  the  other  is  the  'Femmes  * 
Savantes/ 

In  the  'Femmes  Savantes*  we  have  the  ultimate  model  ~ 
of  high  comedy — a  type  of  play  which  must  be  excessively 

287 


288  MOLIERE 

difficult  of  attainment  if  we  may  judge  by  its  extraordinary 
rarity  in  the  dramatic  literature  of  every  language,  ancient 
and  modern.  By  hiffh  comedy  we  mean  a  humorous  play 
which  is  sustained  by  a  worthy  theme  and  in  which  the 
action  is  caused  by  the  clash  of  character  on  character. 
The  'Femmes  Savantes'  is  even  more  absolutely  a  comedy 
than  'Tartuffe,'  since  that  superb  play  threatens  at  one 
moment  to  stiffen  into  drama  and  almost  into  tragedy. 
It  is  ampler  in  its  theme  than  the  'Avare'  and  the 

-'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme/  where  the  interest  is  centered 
on  the  presentation  of  every  aspect  of  a  single  character. 
If  not  so  significant  in  its  thesis  as  the  'Misanthrope/  it 
is  better  built  and  more  adroitly  adjusted  to  the  demands 
of  the  theater,  where  the  desires  of  the  crowd  must  always 
be  considered. 

0,  The  'Femmes  Savantes'  is  also  one  of  the  most  origi- 
nal of  all  its  author's  plays.  The  loftier  and  the  larger 
Moliere's  comedy  the  less  he  borrows.  When  he  was 
composing  a  farce,  he  was  content  to  go  to  others,  some- 
times for  his  plot  and  sometimes  for  his  episodes;  he 
was  willing  enough  to  take  the  'Fourberies  de  Scapin' 
from  the  Latin  and  the  'Etourdi'  from  the  Italian.  But 
the  indefatigable  industry  of  his  countless  commentators 
has  not  enabled  them  to  indicate  the  actual  sources  of  the 
yFemmes  Savantes'  or  of  'Tartuffe/  even  though  it  has 
permitted  them  to  point  out  a  few  suggestions  here  and 
there  in  the  works  of  his  predecessors  and  his  contempo- 
Taries  by  which  he  may  have  profited.  It  is  when  Moliere 
is  at  his  best  that  he  owes  least  to  others.  He  was  then 
/looking,  not  at  what  had  already  been  set  on  the  stage, 
but  at  what  was  going  on  in  the  society  by  which  he  was 
purrounded.  He  was  drawing  directly  from  nature,  and 
he  was  not  disposed  to  take  his  material  ready-made 


THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES'  289 

from  the  hand  of  another.     He  had  no  need  to  copy  any- 
thing but  humanity  itself. 

Moliere  seems  to  have  given  a  longer  time  to  the  com- 
position of  the  'Femmes  Savantes'  than  he  was  able  to 
bestow  on  any  other  of  his  later  plays.  Apparently  he 
had  begun  to  compose  this  comedy  several  years  before 
it  finally  appeared  in  the  theater.  It  was  prepared  at 
leisure,  even  if  its  preparation  was  more  than  once  in- 
terrupted by  a  call  to  produce  other  plays  for  which  there 
was  an  immediate  demand  either  from  the  king  or  from 
the  company.  And  perhaps  this  preoccupation  with  a 
more  ambitious  work  may  account  for  the  perfunctory 
carelessness  with  which  the  'Comtesse  d'Escarbagnas' 
was  dashed  off  and  for  the  reckless  swiftness  of  the  'Four- 
beries  de  Scapin.'  The  'Femmes  Savantes'  is  spaciously 
conceived,  solidly  constructed,  and  highly  finished.  Evi- 
dently the  author  had  allowed  it  to  ripen  slowly;  and 
when  at  last  he  chose  to  bring  it  before  the  public  it  was 
free  from  all  evidences  of  haste. 

It  is  a  five  act  comedy  in  verse;    and  it  was  first  acted"*"" 
at  the  Palais-Royal  in  March,  1672,  less  than  a  year  before— 
Moliere's  death.     It  is  the  last  of  Moliere's  nobler  com- 
edies;   and  in  it  he  handled  again,  on  an  ampler  scale, 
the  subject  he  had  lightly  treated  in  the  earliest  play 
written    after   his   return   to   Paris.     In    the    'Precieuses 
Ridicules'  he  had  killed  the  vogue  of  the   romance-of- 
gallantry,  as  one  of  his  masters  in  comedy,  Cervantes, 
had   killed   the  vogue  of  the   romance-of-chivalry.     Yet 
the  spirit  which   animated  the  precieuses  was  not  dead, 
and  it  had  manifested  itself  anew  in  fresh  forms  in  the 
thirteen  years    since  Moliere   had   first  attacked  it.     In 
these  new  manifestations  he  detected  a  menace  to  society 
far  more  dangerous  than  he  had  discovered  in  the  older 


290  MOLIERE 

affectations.  It  was  with  delight  that  he  returned  to  the 
assault,  not  with  another  little  play,  like  the  'Precieuses 
Ridicules/  amusingly  sustained  by  the  artifices  of  farce, 
but  with  a  compactly  planned  comedy  of  fuller  im- 
port, devoid  of  fantastic  exaggeration  and  direct  in  its 
portrayal  of  character. 


II 

In  the  'Femmes  Savantes,'  as  earlier  in  'Tartuffe,'  in 
the  'Avare'  and  in  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme/  Moliere 
lays  his  story  in  a  single  family.  An  easy-going  citizen, 

jChj^sale  (glayed ,by  Moliere, himself)  has  a  wife,  Phila- 
minte,  who  is  educated  beyond  her  intelligence.  There 
are  two  daughters,  Armande,  the  elder,  who  takes  after 
her  mother,  and  Henriette,  the  younger  (played  by  Mo- 

^Tiere's  wife),  who  has  simpler  tastes  and  more  common- 
place desires.  Chrysale  has  a  brothex  Affite,  who  is 
embodiment  of  common  sense,  and  also  a  sisterJBelige, 
an  absurd  old  maid,  who  holds  with  Philaminte  and  who 
believes  herself  to  be  sought  by  several  suitors.  A  most 
presentable  young  man,  Clitandre  (acted  by  La  Grange), 
had  paid  his  attentions  to  Armande,  only  to  be  rebuffed 
by  her  scorn  for  anything  so  mundane  as  matrimony, 
whereupon  he  transferred  his  affections  to  Henriette.  In 
the  midst  of  this  family  group  there  is  another  outsider, 
Trissotin,  whom  the  learned  ladies  have  made  a  pet  of, 
because  he  appears  in  their  eyes  as  the  embodiment  of 
the  wit  they  admire  and  of  the  learning  they  adore. 

The  art  of  comedy  is  largely  the  art  of  contrasting 
characters  so  that  each  shall  make  the  other  more  salient 
and  more  significant;  and  in  none  of  his  plays  has  Moliere 
shown  himself  a  more  skilful  artist  than  in  this.  The 


THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES'  291 

weak-willed  Chrysale  is  set  over  against  the  firm  and 
resourceful  Ariste.  The  pedantic  and  platonic  Armande 
is  set  by  the  side  of  the  charmingly  natural  Henriette. 
The  over-educated  Philaminte  is  shown  engaged  in  con- 
troversy with  her  ignorant  servant,  Martine.  And  Cli- 
tandre,  who  has  the  easy  courtesy  of  a  man  of  the  world, 
stands  in  juxtaposition  with  the  pretentiously  arrogant 
Trissotin. 

The  art  of  comedy  also  calls  for  dexterity  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  plot,  for  certainty  of  exposition  and  for  cumu- 
lative interest  in  the  episodes  as  they  succeed  one  another. 
Here  also  Moliere  is  seen  at  his  best;  and  the  opening 
passages  of  the  play  take  us  as  swiftly  into  the  full  current 
of  the  story  as  the  opening  episodes  of  'TartufFe,'  than 
which  there  could  be  no  higher  praise.  The  action  is 
engaged  in  the  very  first  scene  by  a  colloquy  between  the 
two  sisters,  in  which  Armande  reproaches  Henriette  with 
the  younger' s  willingness  to  marry  a  discarded  admirer 
of  the  elder.  She  ends  by  asking  whether  Henriette  is 
absolutely  convinced  that  her  lover  has  conquered  his 
earlier  affection.  Henriette  thereupon  summons  Clitan- 
dre  to  declare  himself  and  to  decide  between  them;  and 
the  young  fellow,  to  the  warm  dissatisfaction  of  the  elder 
sister,  makes  it  plain  that  his  heart  is  now  given  irrevo- 
cably to  the  younger.  And  the  spectators  cannot  help 
feeling  that  Armande  will  thereafter  do  all  in  her  power 
to  prevent  the  course  of  true  love  from  running  smoothly. 

In  the  second  act  we  make  the  acquaintance  of  Chrysale, 
to  whom  Ariste  declares  the  desire  of  Clitandre  to  wed 
Henriette.  But  when  the  more  or  less  hen-pecked  hus- 
band discloses  this  matrimonial  project  to  his  strong- 
willed  wife,  he  is  told  that  she  has  made  another  arrange- 
ment. She  is  determined  that  Henriette  shall  marry 


292  MOLIERE 

Trissotin.  This  prodigy  of  wit  and  wisdom  has  not  pre- 
tended to  be  in  love  with  the  girl;  but  he  is  willing  enough 
to  wed  her  because  both  of  her  parents  are  wealthy. 
When  Ariste  hears  of  the  match  proposed  by  Henriette's 
mother,  he  upbraids  her  father  with  his  weakness  in 
yielding;  and  at  last  he  arouses  in  Chrysale  a  spirit  of 
manly  resistance.  The  worthy  burgher  resolves  to  assert 
himself  for  once.  He  sends  for  a  Notary  to  draw  up  the 
marriage-contract  of  Henriette  and  Clitandre;  and  he  is 
fearless  in  proclaiming  that  the  young  couple  shall  be 
made  happy  that  very  day. 

When  Aristotle  laid  down  the  principle  that  every  play 
H  ought  to  have  a  single  story  of  a  certain  importance  in 
itself,  and  that  it  ought  also  to  set  forth  the  beginning 
and  the  middle  and  the  end  of  this  single  story,  he  was 
unwittingly  testifying  to  the  convenience  of  a  three-act 
form,  one  act  containing  each  of  these  necessary  parts  of 
the  plot.  And  even  when  the  dramatic  poets  have  felt 
compelled  to  fill  out  the  larger  framework  of  five  acts, 
they  have  been  able  to  do  this  only  by  subdividing  one  of 
these  necessary  parts  between  two  acts.  This  is  what 
Moliere  has  done  in  the  'Femmes  Savantes/  In  his  first 
two  acts  we  see  only  the  beginning  of  the  story,  in  which 
the  characters  are  set  before  us  sharply  and  in  which  our 
interest  is  keenly  aroused  in  what  is  to  follow.  Moliere 
had  also  to  divide  the  ending  of  his  story  between  the 
fourth  and  fifth  acts.  It  is  in  the  third  act  that  he  gives 
us  the  swift  succession  of  effects  for  which  we  have  been 
prepared  by  the  earlier  acts  and  which  make  us  eager 
for  the  later  acts. 

In  this  middle  act  we  behold  the  learned  ladies  as- 
sembled. We  see  them  purring  with  extravagant  delight 
as  the  complacent  Trissotin  reads  aloud  two  of  his  empty 


THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES'  293 

and  labored  little  poems.  We  look  on  while  Trissotin 
introduces  his  frienc^,-3iadius,  who  knows  as  much  Greek 
as  any  man  in  France.  We  gaze  with  joy  at  the  quarrel 
that  soon  arises  between  the  two  parlor-poets,  who  get 
hotter  and  hotter  in  the  violence  of  their  objurgations  until 
they  almost  come  to  blows.  We  are  shown  the  angry 
withdrawal  of  the  unvanquished  Vadius,  leaving  Trissotin 
to  the  consolation  of  his  trio  of  female  admirers.  And 
we  look  on  while  Philaminte  tells  Henriette  that  she  is  to 
accept  Trissotin  as  her  husband.  The  girl  protests  in 
vain;  but  when  her  mother  has  left  the  stage  to  be  suc- 
ceeded by  her  father,  she  finds  sudden  encouragement. 
Despite  the  warnings  of  Armande,  Chrysale  announces  to 
Henriette  that  she  shall  be  married  at  once  to  Clitandre. 

After  all  the  bustling  comedy-scenes  of  this  third  act, 
the  fourth  may  seem  a  little  thinner  in  substance,  partly 
because  it  is  mainly  a  preparation  for  the  end  of  the  play. 
Armande  embittered  by  jealousy  seeks  to  set  her  mother 
even  more  strongly  against  Clitandre,  who  comes  in  just 
in  time  to  overhear  her  insidious  attack.  He  defends 
himself;  and  at  that  Armande  declares  that  she  will  now 
accept  the  suit  she  formerly  rejected.  Since  he  is  not 
satisfied  with  a  purely  platonic  relation,  she  will  take  him 
for  her  husband.  But  Clitandre  has  to  decline,  as  he  is 
now  sincerely  in  love  with  Henriette.  And  after  an 
amusing  and  rather  personal  passage  of  arms  between 
Clitandre  and  Trissotin,  we  see  Chrysale  still  resolved 
that  his  younger  daughter  shall  wed  the  man  of  her  choice. 

In  the  fifth  act  Henriette  pleads  with  Trissotin  to  re- 
nounce his  suit,  telling  him  plainly  that  her  heart  is  given 
to  Clitandre;  but  the  self-seeking  pretender  refuses  to 
withdraw.  When  the  Notary  arrives  to  draw  the  marriage 
contract,  Chrysale  designates  Clitandre  as  the  future 


294  MOLIERE 

husband,  and  Philaminte  sets  forward  Trissotin.  Finally, 
the  mother  suggests  that  if  Clitandre  must  marry  one  of 
her  daughters,  he  can  have  Armande,  at  the  same  time  that 
Trissotin  marries  Henriette.  Chrysale  is  weakening  a 
little  when  Ariste  arrives  with  two  letters,  one  to  Phila- 
minte announcing  the  loss  of  a  lawsuit,  which  will  greatly 
diminish  her  fortune,  and  the  other  to  Chrysale,  declaring 
that  his  bankers  have  defaulted,  which  will  sadly  reduce 
his  wealth.  And  thereupon  Trissotin  promptly  with- 
draws, unwilling  to  marry  a  poor  girl.  Clitandre  persists 
in  his  suit;  and  then  Ariste  confesses  that  the  bad  news 
is  only  a  device  of  his  own  to  expose  the  mercenariness  of 
Trissotin.  And  now  that  all  opposition  is  withdrawn, 
Chrysale  valiantly  orders  the  Notary  to  proceed  with  the 
marriage  contract. 

Ill 

Slight  as  may  be  the  story  of  the  'Femmes  Savantes' 
it  is  sufficient  to  sustain  satisfactorily  the  interest  of  the 
spectators;  and  it  is  developed  in  a  sequence  of  situations 
unsurpassed  in  effectiveness  of  humor  and  in  exquisite 
truthfulness  of  character-delineation.  No  single  episode 
in  all  Moliere  is  at  once  more  vigorously  amusing  and 
l^  more  truthful  than  the  Quarrel  between  Trissotin  and 
Vadius.  Nothing  is  more  characteristically  comic  than 
Philaminte's  protest  to  the  Notary,  against  the  barbarity 
of  the  legal  terms  in  which  the  marriage  contract  is  drawn. 
No  character  has  a  more  opulent  humor  and  a  more  vital 
humanity  than  Chrysale,  the  weak-willed  but  well-mean- 
ing husband.  And  the  comedy  as  a  whole  has  a  unity  of 
intent  and  a  harmony  of  tone  which  Moliere  was  rarely 
able  to  attain,  forced  as  he  often  was  to  relieve  a  somber 


THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES'  295 

theme  with  episodes  of  an  almost  farcical  vivacity.  From 
the  rise  of  the  curtain  in  the  first  act  to  its  final  fall  on  the 
fifth,  the  play  is  kept  consistently  on  the  highest  plane  of 
comedy. 

In  no  other  play  has  Moliere  gathered  together  a  more 
entertaining  collection  of  characters,  sharply  individual- 
ized and  eternally  true  to  life.  The  success  of  the  play 
was  immediate;  and  it  has  been  enduring,  for  its  thesis  is 
as  pertinent  to-day  as  it  was  two  centuries  and  a  half  ago, 
and  its  characters  have  a  permanent  appeal.  Philaminte 
and  Armande  are  prototypes  of  the  perennial  blue-stock- 
ing; and  we  can  find  them  in  our  own  time  perorating  in 
culture-clubs  and  attending  conventions  to  the  neglect  of 
their  household  duties.  Their  vocabulary  may  be  dif- 
ferent nowadays;  but  their  attitude  is  the  same.  They 
may  not  be  devoted  to  Greek,  they  may  not  be  enchanted 
by  petty  little  poems,  they  may  not  be  striving  to  reform 
the  language;  but  they  have  changed  only  their  outer 
garments,  and  this  disguise  does  not  prevent  our  recog- 
nizing them  at  once  as  old  acquaintances.  It  would  be 
easy  to  pick  out  in  the  twentieth  century  not  a  few  women 
who  are  thrusting  themselves  forward  in  drawing-rooms 
and  on  the  platform,  and  who  are  as  affected  as  the 
Belise  and  as  pretentious  as  the  Philaminte  that  Moliere 
presented  in  the  seventeenth  century.  And  it  might  not 
be  difficult  to  find  a  few  who  are  as  ignorant  and  as  foolish. 

And  Trissotin  flourishes  to-day  in  America  and  re- 
veals himself  as  complacently  self-satisfied  as  he  did  in 
France  under  Louis  XIV.  He  may  wear  a  coat  of  another 
color,  but  he  has  not  transformed  his  character.  He  may 
have  transferred  his  interests  to  more  modern  topics; 
but  his  method  is  unmodified  and  his  manners  also.  He 
is  as  vain  and  as  superficial  as  ever;  and  he  is  still  sur- 


296  MOLIERE 

rounded  by  a  little  group  of  admiring  women,  open- 
mouthed  and  empty-headed.  Sometimes  he  appears  as  a 
lecturer  on  ethics  or  on  esthetics;  sometimes  he  pre- 
fers to  be  a  parlor-socialist;  and  on  occasion  he  may  even 
venture  to  set  forth  sympathetically  the  most  advanced 
theories  of  the  intellectual  anarchists.  But  more  often 
he  contents  himself  with  disquisitions  upon  the  more  un- 
substantial poets,  Shelley,  for  one,  and  Maeterlinck,  for 
another,  expounding  their  inner  meanings  and  delightedly 
setting  forth  their  airy  withdrawal  above  the  vulgarities 
of  everyday  life. 

Keenly  as  Moliere  has  perceived  and  presented  the 
folly  of  Belise  and  the  absurdity  of  Philaminte,  he  is 
subtler  in  his  portrayal  of  the  more  perverted  Armande, 
the  prurient  prude,  who  pretends  to  put  the  pleasures 
of  the  mind  above  those  of  the  senses,  while  allowing 
us  to  suspect  that  her  own  thoughts  dwell  unduly  and 
unpleasantly  on  more  material  things.  Moliere  had  a 
plentiful  lack  of  liking  for  a  young  woman  who  paraded 
her  false  delicacy  and  her  platonic  shrinking  from  the 
realities  of  matrimony  and  of  motherhood.  He  sees  in 
this  type  a  dangerous  detachment  from  duty,  and  he  does 
not  disguise  his  indignation.  Possessed  as  he  is  by  the 
social  instinct  and  believing  as  he  does  in  the  necessity  of 
being  natural,  he  could  not  but  detest  the  theories  which 
Armande  proclaims.  He  perceives  clearly  enough  that 
if  these  theories  should  prevail,  the  family  would  disin- 
tegrate. Therefore  he  holds  them  to  be  threatening  to 
society. 

He  makes  his  own  attitude  plain  by  contrasting  the 
etherealized  views  of  Armande  with  the  practical  common 
sense  of  Henriette.  No  dialogue  in  all  his  comedies  is 
more  carefully  written  or  more  thoroughly  thought  out 


THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES'  297 

than  the  opening  scene  of  the  'Femmes  Savantes,'  in 
which  Armande  and  Henriette  reveal  themselves  uncon- 
sciously. The  elder  sister  is  characterized  with  a  full 
understanding  of  her  individuality;  but  it  is  the  younger 
sister  who  has  the  author's  sympathy  and  whom  he  por- 
trays with  a  caressing  touch.  Henriette  is  nature  itself 
and  straightforward  simplicity;  she  is  essentially  womanly; 
she  has  a  wholesome  charm  and  a  feminine  grace.  Per- 
haps it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Henriette  embodies 
Moliere' s  ideal  of  the  French  girl,  just  as  Rosalind  may 
represent  Shakspere's  ideal  of  the  English  girl.  And  the 
contrast  of  the  two  characters  is  as  instructive  as  it  is 
interesting;  it  affords  us  an  insight  into  the  divergent 
attitude  of  the  two  races  toward  woman  as  a  wife  and  as 
a  mother.  The  Frenchman  does  not  idealize  woman  as 
the  Englisjiman_is_wont  to  do,  for  Shakspere  is  ever  and 
always  poetic,  whereas  Moliere  deals  witR  tFe~]prose~~oT 
life,  even  if  he  has  to  express"  himself  in  rimecTalexa n- 
drines.  As  the  type  of  maidenly  ignorance  Moliere  gives 
us  Agnes,  where  Shakspere  presents  us  with  Miranda; 
and  as  the  representative  of  all  that  is  most  attractively 
feminine  he  depicts  Henriette,  where  Shakspere  has 
imagined  Rosalind.  The  love-affair  of  Clitandre  and 
Henriette  is  not  romantic  and  it  has  no  hectic  flush  of 
romanticism;  it  is  a  solid  affection,  founded  on  sympathy 
of  taste  and  of  character;  but  it  is  quite  as  likely  to  result 
in  durable  happiness  as  the  more  poetic  wooing  of  Or- 
lando and  Rosalind. 

IV 

If  it  is  appropriate  to  apply  a  modern  term  to  this 
masterpiece  of  comedy,  it  might  be  described  as  a  prob- 
lem-play. It  is  a  picture  of  manners  and  a  gallery  of 


N 


298  MOLIERE 

portraits;  but  it  has  also  its  thesis,  as  the  'Ecole  des 
Maris'  had  and  the  *  Misanthrope '  also.  As  we  sit  in  the 
theater  while  its  successive  scenes  are  acted  before  us,  we 
are  forced  to  reflect  upon  the  higher  education  of  woman, 
or  at  least  upon  the  effect  produced  on  the  social  organi- 
zation when  women  undertake  a  rivalry  with  men  in  the 
attaining  of  learning.  It  is  true  enough  that  Moliere 
does  not  here  introduce  us  to  women  who  have  really 
made  themselves  equal  to  men  in  solidity  of  attainment, 
since  Belise  and  Philaminte  and  Armande  are  all  of  them 
pretenders  to  knowledge;  their  paraded  learning  has 
little  foundation,  and  they  have  vainly  sought  to  acquire 
culture  without  the  labor  of  getting  an  adequate  educa- 
tion as  a  foundation  for  it. 

Although  this  may  be  admitted,  the  question  is  raised 
nevertheless;  and  it  is  obvious  also  that  Moliere  does 
not  attempt  to  reply  to  it.  As  a  dramatist,  whose  duty 
it  is  to  set  on  the  stage  life  as  he  sees  it,  he  is  not  called 
upon  to  answer  the  query  he  suggests.  It  is  sufficient 
if  the  playwright  poses  his  problem,  and  there  is  never 
any  obligation  on  him  to  solve  it  himself.  It  is  enough 
if  he  calls  it  to  our  attention  and  if  he  asks  us  to  find  each 
our  own  solution.  Should  he  go  further  and  strive  to 
impose  on  us  his  own  answer  to  the  interrogation,  he 
would  be  beyond  his  province  of  depicting  life.  His 
play  is  then  no  longer  a  true  problem-play;  it  becomes 
immediately  a  sort  of  dramatized  novel-with-a-purpose, 
in  which  the  convincing  portrayal  of  society  has  been 
sacrificed  to  an  attempt  to  prove  a  theory.  Now,  in  all 
the  arts  the  effort  to  prove  anything  is  always  sterile, 
since  it  is  the  province  of  art  to  reproduce  nature  and  not 
to  find  answers  for  insistent  questions. 
,  Moliere  is  too  completely  a  dramatist  to  set  on  the 


THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES'  299 

stage  any  single  character  as  the  mouthpiece  for  his  own 
opinions.  It  is  his  duty  as  a  dramatist  to  let  the  persons 
in  his  play  express  the  sentiments  by  which  they  are 
severally  animated.  In  fairness  to  the  characters  he  has 
created  he  must  permit  them  to  speak  for  themselves  and 
to  proclaim  their  beliefs  each  in  his  own  fashion.  Even 
Chrysale,  the  character  that  Moliere  himself  imperson- 
ated, cannot  be  held  necessarily  to  voice  his  own  opinions 
on  the  question  at  issue.  And  yet  in  the  course  of  the 
comedy  Moliere  manages  to  have  one  or  another  of  the 
speakers  say  the  things  which  he  wants  the  audience  to 
hear  and  which  he  holds  it  necessary  to  have  said  by 
some  one,  if  the  whole  subject  is  to  be  presented  at  full 
length.  Sometimes  one  of  these  needful  remarks  is  made 
by  Chrysale  and  sometimes  by  Ariste.  Both  Clitandre 
and  Henriette  take  part  in  this  expression  of  the  opinions 
that  have  to  be  put  forth.  And  now  and  again  it  is  the 
rustic  Martine  who  takes  her  part  in  the  discussion  and 
who  drops  words  of  unexpected  wisdom. 

As  a  result,  it  is  not  difficult  to  arrive  at  Moliere's  own 
views  on  the  thesis  he  has  propounded,  even  though  he 
has  put  into  his  play  no  single  character  charged  with 
the  utterance  of  his  personal  opinions.  If  we  want  to  dis- 
cover what  Moliere  himself  thinks  we  need  not  scrutinize 
what  any  one  of  his  characters  happens  to  say;  we  have 
only  to  consider  the  comedy  as  a  whole  and  to  weigh  the 
total  impression  it  leaves  upon  us.  What  Chrysale  may 
declare  at  one  moment  or  what  Martine  may  put  forth 
at  another,  what  Philaminte  or  Belise  may  assert — these 
things  are  useful  enough  in  their  place;  but  the  truth  is 
not  in  any  one  of  them.  It  is  what  all  the  characters 
say,  it  is  what  they  do,  it  is  what  they  are — these  are  the 
things  which  tell  us  what  Moliere's  own  attitude  is.  This 


3oo  MOLIERE 

attitude  is  clearly  shown  by  the  single  fact  that  the  learned 
ladies  are  all  of  them  more  or  less  foolish,  and  that  Tris- 
sotin,  the  man  whom  these  foolish  women  foolishly  ad- 
mire, is  also  foolish.  It  is  even  more  evidently  disclosed 
by  the  added  fact  that  the  most  sympathetic  character, 
Henriette,  is  in  revolt  against  the  pretentiousness  of  her 
mother  and  her  aunt  and  her  sister. 

Although  Moliere  himself  broke  away  early  from  his 
father's  house,  and  although  his  own  home  was  not  happy, 
he  is  ever  the  defender  of  the  family  from  foes  within  and 
without;  and  he  thinks  that  everything  is  dangerous  which 
may  tempt  a  woman  to  disregard  her  household  duties. 
His  belief  is  that  woman  is  completely  filling  her  place 
in  the  world  when  she  is  simply  a  wife  and  a  mother.  He 
thinks  that  women  fail  to  do  the  best  they  can  for  them- 
selves when  they  turn  aside  from  this  noble  function,  and 
when  they  despise  and  neglect  the  privileges  of  wifehood 
and  of  motherhood  to  assert  arrogantly  an  equality  with 
men,  instead  of  being  satisfied  with  the  superiority  which 
men  have  generally  conceded  to  them.  He  is  of  opinion 
that  a  woman  will  have  a  full  life  and  will  best  accom- 
plish that  for  which  nature  intended  her,  only  when  she 
is  satisfied  with  her  place  in  the  household  and  when  she 
joys  in  being  the  mother  of  children  whom  she  has  the 
pleasure  of  bringing  up.  If  her  life  is  thus  filled  to  over- 
flowing, she  will  have  little  leisure  for  rivalry  with  man 
in  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  and  in  the  advancement 
of  learning.  Therefore  Moliere  cannot  help  perceiving 
that  the  pretension  of  women  to  intellectual  equality  is 
too  often  but  a  barren  affectation.  And  for  pretentious 
affectations  of  every  kind  Moliere  had  only  contempt 
and  scorn. 

In  the  'Femmes  Savantes,'  as  perhaps  in  no  other  of 


THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES'  301 

his  comedies,  can  we  discover  the  abiding  influence  of 
Montaigne,  which  is  as  direct  and  at  times  as  powerful 
as  that  of  Rabelais.  It  is  in  *  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac' 
that  the  indebtedness  to  Rabelais  is  most  clearly  revealed, 
in  its  hearty  humor  and  in  its  exuberant  fun-making. 
Both  Rabelais  and  Montaigne  were  governed  by  the  social 
instinct  and  they  saw  man  as  a  member  of  society.  More- 
over they  both  believed  in  nature,  as  they  each  understood 
it,  and  they  were  prompt  to  plead  in  its  behalf.  In  spirit 
Moliere  was  akin  to  both  of  them;  and  he  had  nourished 
himself  on  their  works.  His  indebtedness  to  them  is 
deeper  than  any  chance  reproduction  of  casual  passages, 
here  and  there,  in  one  play  or  another;  it  extends  to  his 
philosophy,  to  his  attitude  toward  life  as  a  whole,  to  his 
feeling  for  the  larger  problems  of  existence. 


In  the  '  Femmes  Savantes '  we  can  discover  as  well 
that  Moliere  had  found  his  profit  also  in  the  study  of 
another  of  his  predecessors.  Nisard  declared  that  he 
could  detect  the  influence  of  Descartes  in  some  of  the 
comic  dramatist's  most  beautiful  passages,  "in  that  logic 
of  dialogue  so  free  in  its  turns  and  yet  so  serried."  And 
it  is  perhaps  in  this  play  that  these  passages  are  most 
abundant,  in  the  opening  scene  between  the  two  sisters, 
for  example,  and  in  the  later  scene  when -Clitandre  ex- 
plains to  Armande  why  he  has  transferred  his  affection 
to  Henriette.  Moliere's  style  was  suppler  than  ever  in 
this  comedy,  more  substantial,  more  warmly  colored. 
Perhaps  'Tartuffe'  and  the  'Misanthrope'  are  the  only 
other  plays  of  his  which  really  rival  the  'Femmes  Sa- 
vantes' in  literary  merit.  His  style  is  never  academic;  it 


302  MOLIERE 

has  ever  the  savory  directness  of  popular  speech;  it  al- 
ways unites  clearness  of  thought  to  intensity  of  expression. 

Purists  and  pedants  have  found  fault  with  his  manner 
of  writing  as  they  have  with  Shakspere's,  and  to  as  little 
purpose.  Neither  the  English  dramatist  nor  the  French 
aim  at  empty  propriety  of  phrase;  their  sentences  are 
always  animated  and  tingling  with  the  emotion  of  the 
moment.  In  their  hands  the  language  is  molten  and 
malleable  and  they  bend  words  to  their  bidding,  often 
forcing  a  phrase  to  carry  more  meaning  than  it  had  ever 
borne  before.  Especially  is  Moliere's  a  style  intended 
for  oral  delivery.  It  is  meant  not  for  the  eye  of  the  single 
reader  in  the  library,  but  for  the  ears  of  the  audience 
assembled  in  the  theater.  More  than  one  speech  which 
may  seem  trailing  and  tortuous  to  the  linguistic  critic, 
falls  trippingly  from  the  tongue  of  the  actor.  And  it  was 
the  actor  whom  Moliere  had  ever  in  mind.  His  lines 
were  written  primarily  for  delivery  on  the  stage  and  only 
secondarily  for  perusal  in  the  study.  They  have  the  free 
and  flexible  rhythm  of  the  spoken  word,  so  different  from 
the  more  balanced  construction  which  befits  a  style  in- 
tended only  for  the  reader.  Moliere  was  an  actor  himself 
and  he  knew  the  needs  of  the  actor.  If  we  may  accept 
the  testimony  of  Coquelin,  who  reincarnated  most  of  the 
parts  Moliere  prepared  for  his  own  acting,  even  the  long- 
est of  these  parts  is  not  physically  fatiguing  to  the  actor, 
however  difficult  any  one  of  them  may  be  to  impersonate 
adequately. 

The  unfailing  brilliance  of  the  dialogue  of  the  '  Femmes 
Savantes'  is  never  external;  it  is  achieved  by  no  explo- 
sive epigram;  it  is  not  the  result  of  merely  picking  clever 
sayings  from  a  notebook  and  pinning  them  into  the  con- 
versation at  a  venture.  But  if  there  is  no  trace  of  arti- 


THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES'  303 

ficial  crackle  and  rattle  like  that  which  at  once  pleases 
and  provokes  us  in  the  comedies  of  Congreve  and  of 
Sheridan,  and  which  we  cannot  help  suspecting  to  have 
been  elaborated  at  leisure,  there  is  in  this  comedy  of 
Moliere's  a  constant  play  of  wit  of  a  more  truly  intellectual 
kind.  The  French  dramatist's  humor  is  more  solidly 
rooted  in  truth  and  more  luxuriant  in  its  flower;  and  his 
wit  is  less  specious  and  more  pervasive.  The  whole  play 
is  bathed  in  wit  and  swims  in  wit;  and  this  wit  is  rather 
in  the  thought  than  in  the  phrasing.  It  is  the  wit  of  the 
intelligence,  and  not  of  the  vocabulary  only. 

French  critics  have  distinguished  three  forms  of  witti- 
cism, of  the  humorous  stroke  proper  to  comedy.  One 
is  the  witticism  itself,  pure  and  simple,  existing  for  its 
own  sake,  as  serviceable  in  one  scene  as  another;  and 
for  this  inexpensive  effect  Moliere  has  no  liking.  Another 
is  the  speech  that  evokes  laughter  because  it  expresses 
essential  character;  and  a  third  is  the  phrase  which  comes 
spontaneously  as  the  culmination  of  a  situation,  and  which 
is  funny  only  because  it  is  spoken  by  that  particular 
character  at  that  particular  moment.  The  dialogue  of 
Moliere's  comedies  is  studded  with  humorous  strokes 
of  these  two  latter  classes.  Indeed,  he  had  the  gift  of 
hitting  on  the  sentence  which  combines  the  two,  express- 
ing character  at  the  instant  that  the  situation  culminates. 
Such  is  the  parting  shot  of  Vadius  as  he  challenges  Tris- 
sotin  to  meet  him  face  to  face — "at  the  bookseller's." 
Such  is  Chrysale's  sudden  "my  sister,"  by  which  he  seeks 
to  suggest  that  he  has  been  addressing  to  Belise  the  dar- 
ing speech  that  he  suspects  Philaminte  is  ready  to  resent. 

Moliere  does  not  condescend  to  the  empty  glitter  of  the 
clever  sentence,  which  is  extraneous  to  the  immediate 
purpose  of  the  scene;  and  he  also  eschews  that  bandying 


304  MOLIERE 

of  sharp  personalities  which  often  degenerated  into  sheer 
vulgarity  of  retort  in  the  Restoration  dramatists,  and  which 
is  not  as  infrequent  as  might  be  wished  in  Shakspere. 
There  is  delicate  fencing  in  the  interview  of  the  two  sisters; 
there  is  sharp  rapier-play  in  the  duel  between  Clitandre 
and  Trissotin;  and  there  is  rougher  saber  work  when 
Vadius  and  Trissotin  turn  on  each  other.  But  even  in 
the  encounter  between  these  two  thin-skinned  and  quick- 
tempered men  there  is  no  hint  of  the  seeming  brutality 
which  we  discover  in  the  cut-and-thrust  repartee  of 
Beatrice  and  Benedick,  and  which  suggests  rather  the 
boxing-glove  than  the  fencing-foil.  In  Moliere's  comedy 
the  characters,  however  irritable  or  exacerbated,  abide 
by  the  rules  of  the  sport  and  they  do  not  hit  below  the 
belt.  They  preserve  the  courtesy  of  the  school  of  arms, 
with  the  self-respect  which  implies  respect  for  others. 

VI 

There  are  some  of  Moliere's  admirers  who  feel  that 
in  this  comedy  Moliere  fell  below  his  customary  standard 
of  urbanity  and  amenity  in  his  delineation  of  Trissotin. 
And  for  this  regret  there  is  a  certain  justification.  To 
us  to-day  Trissotin  is  a  type  of  the  immensely  conceited 
man  of  letters;  and  as  he  plays  off  his  little  parlor-tricks 
before  us  we  recall  the  cynical  saying  that  an  amateur  is 
a  man  who  loves  nothing  and  a  connoisseur  is  a  man  who 
knows  nothing.  But  to  Moliere's  contemporaries  Tris- 
sotin was  primarily  the  portrait  of  a  living  man,  of  the 
Abbe  Cotin.  The  two  little  epigrams  that  Trissotin 
reads  with  smug  complacency  are  taken  from  the  pub- 
lished works  of  Cotin;  and  the  imagined  quarrel  of  Tris- 
sotin and  Vadius  had  been  preceded  by  a  real  altercation 


THE  'FEMMES  SAVANTES'  305 

between  Cotin  and  Menage.  It  has  ever  been  asserted, 
but  apparently  without  warrant,  that  Moliere  had  origi- 
nally called  the  character  Tricotin. 

More  than  once  Moliere  vigorously  defended  himself 
against  the  charge  of  putting  real  persons  into  his  plays; 
and  it  is  in  vain  that  efforts  have  been  made  to  identify 
Tartuffe  and  Alceste  with  any  of  those  who  have  been 
suggested  as  the  living  originals  of  these  characters.  Yet 
in  this  single  instance  he  seems  to  have  departed  from  his 
practice  and  to  have  violated  his  own  rule.  In  general, 
Moliere  was  gentle  and  kindly;  and  he  did  not  retort 
when  he  was  cruelly  assailed  even  in  his  own  family  life. 
Once,  and  once  only,  in  the  '  Impromptu  de  Versailles/ 
he  had  turned  aside  to  transfix  one  of  his  wanton  assail- 
ants with  a  scornful  shaft.  And  yet  in  the  'Femmes 
Savantes*  we  find  what  seems  to  be  a  second  example  of 
this  Aristophanic  license  of  personal  attack.  But  when 
the  two  cases  are  considered  carefully  they  are  seen  not 
to  be  parallel.  In  holding  Cotin  up  to  ridicule  before 
those  who  knew  him,  Moliere  was  apparently  less  moved 
by  resentment  against  the  individual  than  by  detestation 
of  the  class  to  which  the  abbe  belonged. 

It  is  true  that  Cotin  had  attempted  a  translation  of 
Lucretius  and  had  thus  posed  as  a  rival  of  Moliere's. 
It  is  a  fact  also  that  he  had  defended  himself  as 
best  he  could  against  the  satires  of  Boileau  and  that  in 
so  doing  he  had  gone  out  of  his  way  to  insult  Moliere. 
These  things  may  have  called  him  to  the  attention  of 
the  comic  dramatist;  and  Boileau  may  have  besought  his 
friend  and  literary  ally  to  second  his  own  assault.  But 
these  things  alone  would  not  have  sufficed  to  tempt  Mo- 
liere into  personality  if  he  had  not  seen  in  Cotin  the 
embodiment  of  literary  pretentiousness  supported  by  a 


306  MOLIERE 

limited  foundation  of  intelligence.  Moliere  detested 
heartily  all  that  Cotin  stood  for;  and  he  had  only  con- 
tempt for  all  that  Cotin  admired.  It  was  not  the  personal 
slurs  on  himself,  but  the  feeble  pettiness  of  Cotin's  verses 
which  allured  Moliere  irresistibly  to  put  their  author  into 
his  comedy.  Humor  always  loves  a  dull  mark;  and  Mo- 
liere's  laughter  could  not  but  be  spontaneous  and  copious 
at  the  sight  of  the  empty  prettiness  and  the  punning 
conceits  which  constitute  Cotin's  attempts  at  poetry. 

Trissotin,  moreover,  is  larger  than  any  Cotin.  Moliere 
is  not  a  mere  photographer;  and  he  gives  us  a  durable 
painting,  even  if  it  happens  also  to  be  a  portrait;  he 
gives  us  a  typical  character,  even  if  it  chances  also  to  be 
the  reproduction  of  an  individual.  His  contemporaries 
may  have  seen  in  Trissotin  only  the  peculiarities  of  Cotin; 
but  for  posterity  Trissotin  exists  for  his  own  sake,  with 
an  eternal  truthfulness  and  with  a  largeness  which  far 
transcends  the  accidental  original.  In  fact,  Trissotin  is 
to  us  nowadays  the  unforgettable  portrait  of  the  essential 
pedant;  and  we  are  no  more  called  upon  to  remember 
the  forgotten  individual  who  was  its  exciting  cause,  than 
we  are  summoned  to  keep  in  mind  the  unknown  Greek 
girl  who  may  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  serve  as  the 
living  model  for  a  Venus  of  Praxiteles. 

Candor  compels  the  admission,  however,  that  even  if 
this  solitary  straying  of  Moliere' s  into  the  lower  region 
of  personality  may  be  comprehensible  and  even  excusa- 
ble, it  is  none  the  less  regrettable — especially  since  Tris- 
sotin's  withdrawal  of  his  suit  when  Henriette  is  supposed 
to  be  less  fully  dowered  than  he  had  believed,  reveals 
him  as  meanly  self-seeking,  a  contemptible  characteristic 
due  to  the  exigencies  of  the  plot  and  not  inherently  re- 
lated to  the  type  represented.  Here  Moliere  seems  to 


THE  TEMMES  SAVANTES'  307 

have  laid  himself  open  to  the  accusation  of  deficiency  of 
tact  which  was  brought  against  Dickens  when  he  be- 
stowed certain  of  the  external  peculiarities  of  the  living 
Leigh  Hunt  on  that  genial  swindler,  Harold  Skimpole. 
In  justice,  it  must  be  noted  that  Moliere  was  here  deal- 
ing with  an  enemy,  who  had  assailed  himself  without 
provocation,  whereas  Dickens  was  misusing  a  friend  who 
had  done  him  no  injury. 

Although  it  was  well  known  that  Menage  had  been  the 
other  participant  in  the  squabble  which  suggested  the 
quarrel  scene  of  Trissotin  and  Vadius,  Menage  did  not 
sit  for  the  portrait  of  Vadius.  Very  wisely  he  refused  to 
put  on  the  cap,  holding  that  it  would  not  fit  him;  and 
he  never  displayed  any  resentment  toward  Moliere.  In- 
deed, Vadius,  the  priggish  pretender,  is  diametrically 
unlike  Menage,  who  was  really  a  scholar,  manly  and  un- 
pretending. He  was  an  intimate  friend  of  Madame  de 
Sevigne  and  of  Madame  de  Lafayette,  to  whom  he  had 
given  instruction  in  Italian  and  in  Greek.  He  was  a 
kindly  man,  serviceable  to  his  friends  and  stanchly  loyal 
to  Fouquet  after  the  disgrace  of  that  supporter  of  arts  and 
letters.  And  as  an  etymologist  he  was  far  in  advance  of 
his  time.  Moliere  could  have  had  no  grudge  against 
Menage  since  he  had  no  hostility  toward  real  scholarship. 
It  was  only  the  pretenders  to  learning  that  he  delighted 
in  unmasking.  We  may  be  sure  that  Vadius  was  no  more 
intended  for  Menage  than  Philaminte  and  Belise  were 
aimed  at  Madame  de  Sevigne  and  Madame  de  Lafayette, 
women  who  were  essentially  womanly  although  they  had 
added  culture  to  education. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  'MALADE  IMAGINAIRE'  AND  THE  DEATH  OF 

MOLIERE 

I 

THE  final  months  of  Moliere's  life  were  full  of  struggle, 
of  sadness  and  of  disappointment.  His  sister-in-law 
Madeleine  Bejart,  the  comrade  of  his  strolling,  had  died 
in  February,  -1672,  exactly  one  year  before  the  day  on 
which  he  was  to  die  himself.  In  September  his  second 
son  had  been  born,  to  survive  less  than  a  fortnight,  car- 
ried off  in  infancy,  just  as  his  elder  son  had  been  taken. 
His  own  health  was  giving  him  concern  and  his  strength 
was  failing  slowly.  He  was  beginning  to  weary  of  the 
incessant  effort  imposed  on  him.  And  there  were  signs 
that  he  did  not  stand  so  high  in  the  favor  of  the  king  as  he 
had  supposed;  at  least  it  became  evident  that  Louis  XIV 
was  not  unwilling  to  sacrifice  Moliere  to  Lulli.  The 
monarch  seems  always  to  have  esteemed  the  playwright 
chiefly  because  of  the  prompt  certainty  with  which  Mo- 
liere ministered  to  the  royal  pleasure  by  improvising  the 
comedy-ballets  for  which  Lulli  composed  the  music;  and 
when  Louis  XIV  was  called  upon  to  choose  between  the 
intriguing  composer  and  the  sincere  dramatist,  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  prefer  the  Florentine  to  the  Frenchman. 

Lulli  knew  his  own  value  and  he  was  well  aware  that 
the  king  believed  him  indispensable  for  the  court  festivi- 

308 


THE  'MALADE  IMAGINAIRE'  309 

ties  of  all  sorts.  Trading  upon  this  and  threatening  to 
withdraw  from  France  in  case  Louis  XIV  refused  to  grant 
him  what  he  asked,  he  induced  the  monarch  to  confer 
upon  him  a  privilege  for  opera  which  gave  him  almost  a 
musical  monopoly.  Lulli  was  to  have  sole  control  over 
every  musical  performance  which  should  be  given  before 
the  king,  whether  in  the  royal  chapel,  at  the  Opera  or 
during  the  court  festivities.  The  edict  he  extorted  from 
the  monarch  also  forbade  any  one  else  to  perform  any- 
where any  play  set  to  music  without  his  permission. 
Lulli  began  at  once  to  profit  by  this  royal  privilege;  the 
actors  of  the  Palais-Royal  and  of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne 
were  notified  that  they  could  not  thereafter  employ  more 
than  six  singers  and  twelve  instrumentalists  or  engage 
any  of  the  king's  dancers,  whose  services  were  absolutely 
reserved  to  the  manager  of  the  Opera. 

When  ' Psyche'  was  revived  at  the  Palais-Royal,  in  the 
fall  of  1672,  Moliere  had  to  find  substitutes  for  the  origi- 
nal musicians  and  dancers;  and  he  seems  to  have  been 
so  much  annoyed  by  the  restrictions  which  his  former 
collaborator  sought  to  impose  on  him,  that  when  he 
brought  out  the  'Comtesse  d'Escarbagnas'  at  his  own 
theater,  he  discarded  the  music  which  Lulli  had  com- 
posed for  the  original  performance  and  had  a  full  score 
prepared  by  another  composer,  Charpentier.  It  was 
Charpentier,  and  not  Lulli,  to  whom  he  confided  the 
musical  accompaniment  of  his  last  play,  the  'Malade 
Imaginaire,'  which  had  a  burlesque  ceremony  as  elaborate 
as  that  of  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,'  and  in  which 
therefore  the  musical  element  was  equally  important. 

The  prologue  of  this  piece  proves  that  Moliere  intended 
it  specially  for  performance  at  court  before  the  king;  and 
the  comedy  itself  is  evidence  that  it  was  planned  to  paral- 


3io  MOLIERE 

lei  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme/  with  the  expectation 
of  repeating  the  success  achieved  by  that  medley  of  high 
comedy,  farce  and  musical  buffoonery.  In  this  expecta- 
tion the  author-actor  was  disappointed.  In  all  probability 
Lulli  refused  to  permit  the  performance  before  the  sov- 
ereign of  a  piece  enlivened  by  the  music  of  a  rival  com- 
poser. Louis  XIV,  forced  to  choose  between  Lulli  and 
Moliere,  stood  by  the  Italian.  As  a  result  Moliere  had 
to  bring  out  his  last  play  at  the  Palais-Royal;  and  the 
sovereign  deprived  himself  of  the  pleasure  of  beholding 
it  with  the  best  actor  of  his  reign  in  the  chief  part.  This 
may  have  been  a  disappointment  to  the  monarch  himself; 
and  it  was  certainly  a  loss  to  the  author,  whose  comedy 
was  represented  before  the  playgoers  of  Paris  without 
the  prestige  which  it  would  have  had  from  its  original 
performance  before  the  assembled  courtiers. 

II 

Even  though  the  'Malade  Imaginaire'  was  put  together 
obviously  to  repeat  the  popularity  of  the  'Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme,'  with  its  comedy  of  character  tailing  off 
into  opera-bouffe,  its  subject  was  not  so  gay.  Indeed, 
the  theme  of  Moliere's  last  piece,  taken  in  itself  and  de- 
tached from  its  laughable  accompaniments,  is  sober,  not 
to  call  it  somber.  Of  course,  its  darkness  is  carefully 
disguised  by  its  author,  who  lightened  it  deliberately 
because  he  knew  that  he  was  expected  to  make  people 
laugh.  Not  only  is  the  thesis  of  this  piece  more  or 
less  lugubrious,  when  we  separate  it  from  its  humorous 
trimmings,  but  Moliere's  treatment  is  also  frankly  re- 
alistic, in  the  narrower  and  lower  meaning  of  this  ad- 
jective. 


THE  'MALADE  IMAGINAIRE'  311 

The  central  figure  is^Argan,  the  imaginary  invalid,  the 
character  which  Moliere  performed,  and  which  he  may 
even  have  modelled  to  some  slight  extent  upon  himself. 
Argan  is  a  hypochondriac,  a  hysteric,  a  neurasthenic, 
who  has  deceived  himself  into  the  belief  that  he  is  a  sick 
man  and  who  has  centered  all  his  attention  on  his  health. 
The  medical  science  of  the  twentieth  century  would  seek 
to  cure  Argan's  mind  rather  than  his  body,  assured  that 
the  latter  would  be  able  to  take  care  of  itself  as  soon  as 
the  former  was  set  at  ease.  What  Argan  really  needs  is 
mental  healing  and  not  the  drugs  and  purgations  lavished 
upon  him  recklessly  by  the  practitioners  of  his  own  time. 
There  is  really  nothing  the  matter  with  Argan  except 
his  own  belief  that  he  has  one  foot  in  the  grave.  He 
rejects  roughly  every  suggestion  that  he  is  not  on  the 
verge  of  death.  He  insists  violently  on  being  treated 
as  desperately  ill;  he  is  irritable  and  irascible.  And  he 
is  absolutely  self-centered  and  therefore  intensely  selfish.! 
He  is  as  selfish  as  Orgon  in  'Tartuffe/  and  in  the 
same  fashion,  since  he  wants  to  marry  his  daughter  to 
a  physician,  so  that  he  may  have  a  medical  attendant  \ 
always  at  hand,  just  as  Orgon  desires  his  daughter  to 
wed  TartufFe,  so  that  the  director  of  his  soul  might  be 
bound  to  him  by  family  ties.t 

Willing  as  he  was  to  borrow  from  himself  and  from 
others,  Moliere  had  a  fertile  originality,  and  he  was  con- 
stantly displaying  his  ability  to  deal  freshly  and  forcibly 
with  matter  that  he  had  already  handled.  Three  times 
before  had  he  girded  at  the  doctors,  in  the  'Amour  Mede- 
cin/  in  *  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac/  and  in  the  'Medecin 
malgre  lui';  and  now  he  returned  to  the  charge  for  the 
last  time,  attacking  the  medical  profession  once  more  and 
from  another  point  of  view.  He  varied  his  method  and 


312  MOLIERE 

approached  his  target  from  a  different  angle,  but  with  an 
even  acuter  sense  of  the  absurdity  of  contemporary  medi- 
cal pretensions.  Apparently  his  own  failing  health,  and 
the  inability  of  the  physicians  to  afford  him  relief,  had 
made  him  more  bitter  than  ever  before  and  more  biting 
in  his  satire. 

It  is  indeed  a  startling  exhibition  of  crass  ineptitude 
that  he  has  put  before  us  in  this  last  assault  upon  the 
dull  but  erudite  doctors  of  his  day,  who  had  learned 
nothing  except  from  the  books  of  the  ancients,  and  who 
had  forgotten  nothing  therein  contained.  It  is  a  strange 
collection  of  characters  that  Moliere  invites  us  to  con- 
sider, representatives  of  every  department  of  the  healing 
art.  There  js  Aryan's  own  medical  attendant,  the  learned 
Monsieur  Purgon,  with  his  immitigable  sequence  of  laxa- 
tive prescriptions.  There  is  his  special  apothecary,  the 
grasping  Monsieur  Fleurant,  equipped  witH  the  instru- 
ment of  his  subordinate  art  and  eager  always  for  its  em- 
ployment. There  is  Monsieur  Purgon's  brother-in-law, 
the  pompous  Monsieur  Diafoirius;  and  there  is  Mon- 
sieur Purgon's  nephew,  the  younger  Diafoirius.  The 
force  of  satire  cannot  surpass  this  creation  of  Thomas 
Diafoirius,  a  stupendous  caricature  of  the  possible  result 
of  the  medical  education  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

In  all  Moliere's  comedies  there  are  no  two  figures  of  a 
more  amusing  veracity  and  of  a  more  irresistible  humor 
than  the  Diafoirius  pair,  the  father  inflated  with  sonorous 
solemnity,  and  the  son  stuffed  with  barren  learning.  It 
is  by  the  speaking  portraits  of  the  three  physicians  and 
of  the  single  apothecary  who  is  their  fit  ally,  and  by  the 
equally  comic  portrayal  of  the  imaginary  invalid,  who  is 
their  proper  prey,  that  Moliere  manages  to  raise  this 
play  up  to  the  higher  rank  of  true  comedy,  in  spite  of  the 


THE  'MALADE  IMAGINAIRE'  313 

fact  that  not  a  few  of  the  episodes  are  undeniably  farcical 
and  that  the  termination  is  pure  buffoonery,  unmitigated 
fun  which  is  its  own  excuse  for  being. 


Ill 

The  other  characters  are  less  significant  and  less  orig- 
inal. There  is  feline,  the  second  wife  of  Argan,  be- 
lieving in  his  illness  and  awaiting  his  death  that  she  may 
despoil  his  children.  Twice  only  has  Moliere  chosen 
to  introduce  a  step-mother,  the  gracious  and  charming 
Elmire,  who  is  Orgon's  second  wife,  and  the  treacherous 
and  self-seeking  Beline,  who  is  Argan's  second  wife. 
There  is  Argan's  elder  daughterAngeli^ue  (impersonated 
by  Mademoiselle  de  Moliere),  whom  he  wishes  to  marry 
off  to  Thomas  Diafoirius,  and  who  has  chosen  a  husband 
for  herself,  Cleante  (acted  by  La  Grange).  The  lover 
gains  access  to  the  house  in  the  guise  of  a  music-teacher — 
just  as  another  lover  had  already  done  in  an  earlier  play 
of  Moliere's  (and  also  in  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew5). 
There  is  Argan's  younger  daughter,  Louison,  a  mere 
child,  who  figures  only  in  a  single  scene,which  won  the 
high  approval  of  Goethe  as  masterly  in  its  handling. 
There  is  the  unscrupulous  notary,  Monsieur  de  Bonnefoi, 
whom  Beline  has  called  in  to  enable  her  to  grasp  more'of 
Argan's  fortune  than  the  law  permitted.  There  is  Argan's 
brother  Beralde,  closely  akin  to  the  Cleante  of  'Tartuffe' 
and  the  Ariste  of  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,'  and 
resembling  his  predecessors  in  the  earlier  plays  in  that 
he  stands  for,  common  sense  and  in  that  he  acts  as  the 
friend  of  the  young  lovers. 

Finally  there  is^fpjjaette,  another  of  Moliere's  boldly 
drawn  serving-maids,  the  embodiment  of  mirth,  bringing 


3i4  MOLIERE 

a  breath  of  fresh  air  with  her  whenever  she  comes  into 
the  sick-room  and  lightening  it  with  a  gleam  of  sunshine. 
Toinette  recalls  the  Dorine  of  'Tartuffe'  and  the  Nicole 
of  the  '  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,'  but  with  a  more  exuber- 
ant gaiety  which  is  all  her  own.  When  Beralde  persuades 
Argan  to  reject  one  of  his  doctor's  prescriptions  and 
when  the  insulted  physician  renounces  and  denounces  his 
patient,  predicting  speedy  demise  in  consequence  of  the 
withdrawal  of  medical  advice,  it  is  Toinette  who  comes 
to  the  rescue  promptly,  by  disguising  herself  as  a  physi- 
cian (just  as  Portia  had  disguised  herself  as  a  lawyer). 
Possibly  it  was  the  joyous  humor  of  Toinette  and  the  high 
spirits  of  the  successive  scenes  in  which  she  takes  part 
which  led  Daudet  to  declare  that  there  was  in  the  'Malade 
Imaginaire'  an  unmistakable  flavor  of  the  south  of  France, 
a  memory  of  Moliere's  youthful  stay  in  Pezenas  and  of 
his  wanderings  to  and  fro  in  Provence.  Daudet  went 
so  far  as  to  suggest  that  the  play  would  gairi~in  comicality 
if  it  should  be  acted  with  the  accent  of  the  south. 

There  is  also  a  southern  exuberance  and  even  a  south- 
ern exaggeration  in  the  concluding  episode  of  the  farcical 
comedy,  in  the  buffoonery  of  the  burlesque  ceremony, 
which  was  evidently  devised  to  repeat  the  success  achieved 
by  the  reception  of  the  Mamamouchi  in  the  'Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme/  When  Moliere  has  shown  us  the  hidden 
depths  of  Argan' s  selfishness  and  exhibited  every  aspect 
of  the  imaginary  .invalid's  self-delusion,  and  when  Toi- 
nette has  played  her  merry  trick  of  appearing  as  a  physi- 
cian, then  Beralde  gravely  suggests  that  the  best  thing  for 
Argan  to  do  is  to  turn  physician  himself.  He  insists  that 
j\rgan  is  not  more  ignorant  than  the  doctors  themselves, 
and  that  he  will  find  himself  endowed  with  all  their 
learning  as  soon  as  he  has  donned  the  cap  and  gown  of  the 


THE  'MALADE  IMAGINAIRE'  315 

profession.  Argan  is  no  more  difficult  to  persuade  than 
was  Monsieur  Jourdain;  and  then  the  fun  becomes  fast 
and  fantastic.  The  spoken  dialogue  gives  place  to  song 
and  dance.  In  cadence  and  to  music  upholsterers  dance 
in  and  decorate  the  room  for  the  reception  of  the  new 
doctor  in  medicine.  Then  two  by  two  the  academic 
procession  sweeps  in  grandly;  first  of  all,  eight  appren- 
tice-apothecaries armed  with  the  instrument  of  their 
craft,  followed  by  six  apothecaries,  twenty-two  physicians, 
and  ten  surgeons. 

Singing  and  dancing  they  take  their  several  places,  and 
the  presiding  physician  greets  them  in  macaronic  Latin, 
easily  understood  by  a  French  audience.  He  praises 
their  sacred  art,  their  learning,  their  prudence  ancf  their 
common  sense.  He  then  invites  them  to  admit  a  new 
member,  Argan,  who  stands  forward  to  pass  his  examina- 
tion. As  he  answers  the  successive  questions,  the  chorus 
acclaims  in  rime  the  felicity  of  his  responses  and  declares 
his  worthiness  to  be  admitted  to  their  learned  body.  The 
president  administers  the  oath  and  the  candidate  swears 
to  defend  the  rights  of  the  faculty,  and  always  to  abide  by 
what  the  ancients  have  asserted.  He  binds  himself  also 
to  make  use  of  no  new  remedy,  even  though  the  patient 
should  die.  The  presiding  physician  thereupon  confers 
upon  their  new  colleague  all  the  privileges  of  the  pro- 
fession to  purge  and  to  bleed  and  to  kill  throughout  the 
whole  world.  The  surgeons  and  the  apothecaries  dance 
forward  to  pay  reverence  to  the  new  doctor,  who  sings 
his  response  to  the  accompaniment  of  rattling  pestles  and 
mortars.  Finally  the  entire  body  circles  around  the 
recipient,  wishing  him  a  thousand  years  of  life  in  which 
to  eat  and  to  drink,  to  bleed  and  to  kill. 

Grotesque  as  this  termination  of  the  play  may  seem 


3i6  MOLIERE 

to  us  now,  it  had  a  recognizable  relation  to  the  actual 
customs  of  Moliere's  own  time.  It  is  a  parody,  of  course, 
with  all  the  license  of  parody.  But  beneath  its  singing 
and  its  dancing  and  its  amusing  macaronics,  we  can  per- 
ceive not  so  much  an  arbitrary  invention  of  absurdities 
as  a  turning  into  ridicule  of  actual  practices.  Investi- 
gators into  the  history  of  medicine  in  the  reign  of  Louis 
XIV  find  in  this  burlesque  ceremony  an  adroit  condensation 
of  the  long  series  of  examinations  and  dissertations  and 
admissions  which  a  candidate  for  the  doctorate  in  medi- 
cine had  to  undergo.  One  of  these  scholars  has  even 
asserted  that  he  catches  in  Moliere's  parody  an  echo 
.  A<C  rather  of  the  customs  of  the  school  of  medicine  at  Mont- 
^  pellier  than  of  those  which  obtained  in  Paris  itself;  and 
this  may  be  taken,  perhaps,  as  some  slight  confirmation 
of  Daudet's  discovery  of  a  decidedly  southern  aroma  in 
the  comedy  as  a  whole.  It  is  proof,  at  any  rate,  that 
Moliere  was  as .  conscientious  in  achieving  substantial 
accuracy  in  his  use  of  the  technicalities  of  medicine  as 
he  was  in  his  account  of  legal  procedure  and  in  his  em- 
ployment of  law-terms.  He  may  have  seen  the  ceremony 
of  a  doctor's  reception  at  Montpellier;  and  he  must  have 
drawn  also  upon  the  fuller  knowledge  of  his  own  physi- 
cian, Mauvillain. 


IV 

If  it  were  not  well  known  that  the  wildest  humor  often 
has  its  roots  in  the  deepest  melancholy,  we  might  marvel 
at  the  bustling  gaiety  with  which  this  play  is  wound  up 
and  at  the  bubbling  merriment  of  the  earlier  scenes;  and 
we  might  wonder  at  the  variety  of  gay  devices  by  the  aid 
of  which  Moliere  was  able  to  disguise  the  essential  gloom 


THE  'MALADE  IMAGINAIRE'  317 

of  its  central  theme.  On  the  surface  at  least  there  is 
little  to  show  that  it  was  written  by  a  worn  and  weary 
man,  disenchanted  and  almost  disheartened,  afflicted 
with  a  disease  as  incurable  to-day  as  it  was  then.  How 
fatigued  he  was  in  body  and  how  broken  in  spirit  we  may 
gather  from  a  confession  he  made  after  the  third  per- 
formance of  the  'Malade  Imaginaire.'  Talking  to  his 
wife  and  to  Baron,  a  young  actor  whom  he  cherished  and 
who  transmitted  his  remarks  to  Grimarest  thirty  years 
later,  he  declared  that  he  had  no  longer  any  spirit  for  the 
struggle  and  that  he  was  ready  to  give  up.  He  could 
not  bear  up  under  constant  pain  and  increasing  disap- 
pointment. He  felt  that  he  was  nearing  the  end;  and 
yet,  he  added,  "how  much  a  man  must  suffer  before  he 
can  die." 

His  wife  and  Baron  besought  him  to  take  a  rest  and 
not  to  risk  his  strength  on  the  stage  again  until  he  felt 
better.  His  answer  to  their  appeals  testifies  to  the  kindly 
thoughtfulness  of  the  man  and  to  his  essential  unselfish- 
ness. "What  would  you  have  me  do?"  he  asked. 
"There  are  fifty  poor  workmen  who  have  only  their  day's 
wages  to  support  them;  what  would  they  do,  if  I  did  not 
act?"  And  he  persisted  in  appearing  in  the  play  for  the 
fourth  time;  this  was  on  February  seventeenth,  1673. 
It  was  only  with  difficulty  that  he  was  able  to  get  through 
the  performance;  and  he  was  seized  with  a  convulsion 
while  he  was  taking  the  burlesque  oath  in  the  final  cere- 
mony. After  the  play  he  had  a  chill,  and  Baron  sent  for 
a  sedan-chair  and  took  him  home,  from  the  theater  which 
Richelieu  had  built,  to  his  house  near  by  in  the  street 
which  bore  Richelieu's  name.  After  he  was  put  to  bed 
he  was  seized  again  with  a  severe  cough,  which  brought 
up  blood.  There  were  two  sisters  of  charity  visiting  in 


3i*  MOLIERE 

the  house,  and  they  took  care  of  him.  He  sent  Baron  to 
call  his  wife,  but  before  they  could  reach  him  he  was 
choked  by  the  blood  from  a  vein  he  had  broken  in  his 
incessant  coughing.  When  his  wife  came  up  with  Baron, 
they  found  him  dead.  The  priest,  who  had  also  been  sent 
for,  arrived  too  late  to  render  him  the  last  offices  of  the 
church.  He  had  received  the  communion  the  preceding 
Easter. 

Actors  were  still  under  the  ban  of  the  church,  and  they 
were  not  entitled  to  extreme  unction  unless  they  formally 
renounced  the  theater.  Two  priests  of  his  own  parish, 
who  had  been  summoned  first,  had  refused  to  come  to  the 
bedside  of  the  dying  comedian.  The  curate  of  the  same 
parish  also  declined  to  permit  the  body  to  be  buried  in 
the  parish  cemetery — wherein  he  was  only  acting  in 
accord  with  the  ecclesiastical  regulations  then  in  force. 
The  widow  appealed  to  the  archbishop  of  Paris  to  accord 
a  special  grace  which  would  authorize  this  interment. 
When  the  archbishop — Harlay,  a  man  of  notoriously  evil 
life — refused  this  request,  the  widow  threw  herself  at  the 
feet  of  the  king;  and  permission  was  finally  granted  for 
the  burial,  on  condition  that  the  ceremony  should  take 
place  without  pomp,  with  two  priests  only,  and  with  no 
solemn  service.  Thus  it  was  that  Moliere's  funeral  was 
deferred  until  four  days  after  his  death  and  that  it  took 
place  at  night — as  had  always  been  the  custom  in  ancient 
Rome.  The  coffin  was  covered  with  the  pall  of  the  up- 
holsterers to  whose  guild  Moliere  belonged.  It  was  borne 
by  four  priests  and  three  other  ecclesiastics  accompanied 
it — so  that  the  strict  letter  of  the  permission  was  ex- 
ceeded. Six  choir-boys  carried  lighted  candles  in  silver 
candlesticks;  and  several  lackeys  bore  wax  torches.  There 
seems  to  be  some  doubt  as  to  whether  or  not  the  body 


THE  'MALADE  IMAGINAIRE'  319 

was  actually  interred  in  consecrated  ground,  and  also  as 
to  whether  or  not  the  remains  transported  to  the  Pantheon 
during  the  Revolution  were  really  Moliere's. 


In  the  later  years  of  his  life  Moliere  had  been  pros- 
perous. His  income  has  been  estimated  as  equivalent  to 
about  twenty  thousand  dollars  of  our  money  to-day.  He 
was  able  to  indulge  his  luxurious  tastes;  and  although  he 
himself  lived  simply,  he  had  lavishly  fitted  up  his  house 
for  his  wife  about  a  year  before  his  death. 

The  inventory  taken  after  his  demise  gives  the  list  of 
his  stage-costumes  and  of  the  books  that  composed  his 
library.  Among  these  were  a  Bible,  a  Plutarch,  a  Mon- 
taigne (but  no  Rabelais,  oddly  enough),  a  Terence  (but 
no  Plautus),  a  Lucian,  a  Horace,  a  Juvenal,  and  two 
hundred  and  forty  volumes  of  unnamed  French,  Italian, 
and  Spanish  plays.  He  did  not  leave  a  large  fortune, 
some  forty  thousand  livres,  but  his  widow  and  his  sole 
surviving  child,  Madeleine,  inherited  his  copyrights.  A 
sum  of  fifteen  hundiejj  livre^  was  paid- ibr^be- privilege 
of  publishing  the  plays  the  author  had  not  cared  to  print. 
A  further  payment  was  made  to  the  widow  four  years 
later  when  the  younger  Corneille  turned  'Don  Juan* 
into  verse,  softening  down  or  smoothing  out  the  passages 
which  had  given  offense  when  the  play  was  first  acted. 

In  the  dark  weeks  that  immediately  followed  the  death 
of  Moliere,  it  looked  for  a  while  as  though  the  company 
he  had  directed  might  be  compelled  to  disband.  Several 
actors  left  it  at  Easter,  when  the  theatrical  year  ended. 
And  Lulli,  now  that  his  old  collaborator  was  no  more, 
persuaded  the  king  to  give  him  the  Palais-Royal  as  the 


320  MOLIERE 

fittest  theater  for  the  Opera.  Ousted  from  their  play- 
house thus  unexpectedly,  the  company  headed  by  Mo- 
liere's widow  was  fortunate  in  having  among  its  members 
a  man  of  the  high  character  of  La  Grange.  Under  his 
guidance  the  actors  expelled  from  the  Palais-Royal  set 
themselves  up  in  another  playhouse  in  the  rue  Guene- 
gaud,  where  they  were  soon  joined  by  the  leading  mem- 
bers of  the  company  from  the  Marais  theater,  which  the 
king  then  suppressed.  The  chief  reliance  of  the  com- 
bined comedians  was  upon  the  plays  of  Moliere;  and  the 
new  theater  opened  with  a  performance  of  'Tartuffe/ 
Seven  years  after  Moliere's  death,  in  1680,  Louis  XIV 
ordered  the  actors  of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne  to  fuse  with 
those  of  the  Hotel  de  Guenegaud,  and  thus  established 
the  still  flourishing  Comedie-Francaise,  which  is  proud 
to  style  itself  the  "House  of  Moliere"  and  to  cherish 
loyally  the  traditions  it  has  inherited  directly  from  the 
original  manager  of  the  Palais-Royal. 

Nothing  could  have  been  more  becoming  than  the 
conduct  of  Moliere's  widow  immediately  after  his  death. 
She  displayed  abundant  feeling  and  she  behaved  with 
the  utmost  propriety.  She  did  willingly  and  promptly 
all  that  she  was  called  upon  to  do.  How  deep  her  grief 
may  have  been  we  have  no  means  of  knowing,  or  how 
profound  her  affection  for  the  husband  to  whom  she  had 
borne  three  children.  She  may  very  well  have  had  a  sin- 
cere regard  for  him  without  any  romantic  love  and  without 
in  any  way  recognizing  his  greatness.  Not  always  is  a 
man  of  genius  a  hero  in  the  eyes  of  his  wife;  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  credit  her  with  an  ability  to  appreciate 
him  at  his  full  worth.  Four  years  after  his  death  she 
married  again.  Her  second  husband,  Guerin,  was  also 
an  actor,  who  had  joined  the  company  when  the  Marais 


THE  'MALADE  IMAGINAIRE'  321 

theater  was  closed.  By  Guerin  she  had  a  son,  who  has 
testified  that  his  mother  brought  him  up  to  venerate 
Moliere.  She  withdrew  from  the  stage  in  1694;  and  she 
died  in  1700,  nearly  forty  years  after  her  marriage  to 
Moliere.  To  the  end  of  her  career  in  the  theater  she 
continued  to  impersonate  the  characters  which  Moliere 
had  written  for  her,  and  in  the  performance  of  which  he 
had  trained  her. 

Moliere's  sole  surviving  child  was  his  only  daughter, 
Madeleine,  who  was  seven  and  a  half  years  of  age  when 
she  lost  her  father.  She  was  nearly  twelve  when  her 
mother  remarried.  In  1691,  when  she  attained  her  ma- 
jority, she  had  a  slight  dispute  with  her  mother  over  her 
share  of  her  father's  estate,  a  matter  which  was  settled 
two  years  later.  Grimarest,  writing  in  1705,  declared 
that  the  daughter  had  inherited  her  father's  good  qualities. 
In  this  same  year  she  married  a  Monsieur  de  Montalant. 
She  was  then  forty  and  the  bridegroom  was  a  widower  of 
sixty.  She  survived  until  1723 — a  hundred  and  one  years 
after  the  date  of  her  father's  birth;  then  she  died  child- 
less, and  the  lineage  of  Moliere  became  extinct.  Shak- 
spere  and  Moliere — to  point  a  parallel  in  their  lives  for 
the  last  time — had  both  had  sons  born  to  them,  who  died 
before  they  did.  Where  Moliere  left  only  one  daughter, 
Shakspere  left  two;  and  yet  when  his  daughter's  daughter 
died  childless,  his  line  came  to  an  end  almost  as  swiftly 
as  Moliere's. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

MOLIERE  THE  MAN 

I 

IN  an  early  page  of  his  biography  of  Schiller  Carlyle 
asserted  that  "it  would  be  interesting  to  discover  by 
what  gifts  and  by  what  employment  of  them  he  reached 
the  eminence  on  which  we  now  see  him;  to  follow  the 
steps  of  his  intellectual  and  moral  culture;  to  gather  from 
his  life  and  works  some  picture  of  himself/'  The  Scotch 
critic  affirmed  that  "it  would  at  once  instruct  and  gratify 
us  if  we  could  understand  him  thoroughly,  could  trans- 
port ourselves  into  his  circumstances,  outward  and  in- 
ward, could  see  as  he  saw  and  feel  as  he  felt."  And  the 
biographer  pointed  out  the  difficulties  of  his  task:  "such 
men  as  he  are  misunderstood  by  their  daily  companions, 
much  more  by  the  distant  observer,  who  gleans  his  in- 
formation from  scant  records."  And  finally  Carlyle 
called  attention  to  the  added  difficulty  due  to  the  haze 
of  a  foreign  language,  of  foreign  manners,  and  modes  of 
thinking  strange  to  us — a  haze,  which  "confuses  and 
obscures  the  light,  often  magnifying  what  is  trivial,  soft- 
ening what  is  rude,  and  sometimes  hiding  or  distorting 
what  is  beautiful." 

If  Carlyle  was  conscious  of  these  disadvantages,  when 
he  wrote  only  a  scant  half-century  after  Schiller's  death, 
how  much  larger  must  they  loom  before  any  one  who 

undertakes  to  deal  with  Moliere  almost  three  centuries 

322 


MOLIERE  THE  MAN  323 

after  his  birth.  And  yet  there  is  fascination  in  the  resolute 
grapple  with  difficulty,  in  the  effort  to  see  the  man  as  he 
really  was,  to  seize  his  character  as  it  reveals  itself  to  us, 
and  to  estimate  his  art.  The  task  is  irresistibly  allur- 
ing, even  if  the  result  cannot  be  completely  satisfactory. 
Moreover,  any  attempt  to  paint  the  portrait  of  the  artist 
who  has  left  us  a  gallery  of  pictures  of  the  society  in  which 
he  moved  calls  for  the  exercise  of  the  most  delicate  criti- 
cism, of  that  discrimination,  indeed,  which  "dwells  less 
on  the  final  balance  of  good  and  evil  than  on  the  first 
innate  conditions  of  temperament,"  as  Lord  Morley  has 
defined  it,  and  which  considers  carefully  "the  fixed 
limitations  of  opportunity  and  the  complex  interplay  of 
the  two." 

In  psychologic  analysis  of  this  exquisite  precision  no 
one  has  ever  surpassed  Sainte-Beuve;  and  he  took  oc- 
casion more  than  once  to  declare  his  method.  When 
he  sat  himself  down  before  an  author  to  discover  the 
secret  of  character  and  to  penetrate  to  the  soul  of  his  sub- 
ject, he  was  in  the  habit  of  drawing  up  an  interrogatory. 
He  asked  himself  a  series  of  questions  as  to  the  writer's 
race,  his  time,  his  family,  his  father  and  mother,  his  first 
group  of  friends  and  his  later  associates — since  a  man  is 
ever  known  by  the  company  he  keeps.  Then  the  critic 
pushed  the  inquiry  further  and  sought  to  discover  what 
were  the  circumstances  of  the  author's  career.  How 
about  his  health  ?  Was  he  rich  or  poor  ?  What  was  his 
attitude  toward  money  ?  How  did  he  live  ?  What  were 
his  relations  with  women  ?  What  was  his  dominating 
passion  ?  What  were  his  religious  views  and  what  was 
his  philosophy  ?  And  it  was  only  when  he  had  held  this 
inquest  that  Sainte-Beuve  felt  himself  fully  prepared  to 
begin  his  criticism. 


324  MOLIERE 

Even  if  the  scrutiny  may  not  have  been  pushed  to  its 
uttermost  limits,  the  answers  to  most  of  the  questions 
which  Sainte-Beuve  would  have  asked  about  Moliere 
will  be  found  in  the  earlier  pages  of  this  biography.  <  Mo- 
liere was  born  in  Paris;  his  family  was  well-to-do;  he 
saw  the  opening  glories  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV;  his 
health  was  never  good;  he  made  money  and  he  spent  it 
freely,  living  largely  and  having  an  open  hand;  he  had  a 
gift  for  friendship  and  he  was  fortunate  in  his  friends; 
he  was  unhappily  married;  he  died  when  he  was  only 
fifty-one  and  when  he  may  not  have  revealed  his  full 
power.  These  are  the  fundamental  facts  which  must 
serve  to  elucidate  his  character;  and  about  them  there 
can  be  no  dispute.  But  there  are  not  a  few  other  aspects 
of  the  man,  other  characteristic  facts  which  call  for  fur- 
ther consideration:  his  attitude  toward  religion,  for  one, 
and  for  another,  his  position  as  a  representative  of  his 
race  and  of  his  time. 


II 

Moliere's  philosophy  is  closely  akin  to  that  of  Rabelais 
and  Montaigne;  and  although  not  so  relaxed  it  is  not 
really  remote  from  that  of  La  Fontaine.  It  is  easy-going 
and  tolerant;  it  does  not  expect  too  much  from  mankind; 
yet  it  makes  the  best  of  humanity  as  this  happens  to  be. 
Here  it  parts  company  with  the  philosophy  of  Pascal  and 
of  Bossuet,  and  even*  of  Racine,  which  is  severe  and 
austere,  perhaps  almost  as  rigorous  for  themselves  as  for 
others.  Moliere  has  not  a  little  of  the  richness  of  Rabelais' 
humor,  though  he  lacks  the  earlier  writer's  overflowing 
vitality;  and  beneath  the  humor  of  both  there  is  deep  ob- 
servation and  ripe  reflection.  They  did  their  own  think- 


MOLIERE 

From  a  photograph  by  A.  Giraudon  of  the  bust  by  Houdon,  in  the  Theatre  Fran£ais 


MOLIERE  THE  MAN  325 

ing  in  their  own  fashion;  and  they  were  bold  enough  in 
reasoning,  even  if  they  felt  it  needful  to  be  cautious  in 
expression.  Moliere  has  also  his  full  share  of  the  skeptical 
optimism  which  characterizes  Montaigne,  who  also  loved 
sincerity  and  abominated  falsity  and  pretension. 

Considered  by  itself  the  philosophy  of  Moliere  is  like 
his  morality  and  his  religion;  it  is  that  of  a  man  of  the 
world.  It  is  not  vague  or  dreamy  or  mystic;  it  is  practi- 
cal, even  if  it  has  a  flavor  of  epicureanism  rather  than  of 
stoicism.  It  is  not  nourished  on  abstractions;  it  clings 
to  the  concrete  facts,  interpreting  them,  no  doubt,  but 
also  controlled  by  them./  It  is  not  unlike  the  eminently 
uninspired  philosophy  pf  Franklin,  serviceable  enough 
for  everyday  use,  but  n0t  sustaining  in  the  darker  crises 
of  existence.  It  leads  Moliere  to  take  human  nature  as 
he  finds  it,  not  expecting  too  much  and  not  unduly  dis- 
appointed when  men  and  women  do  not  come  up  even 
to  his  modest  expectations.  It  does  not  prevent  his 
warning  his  fellows  of  the  danger  of  selfishness  and  of 
hypocrisy;  neither  does  it  stimulate  him  with  high  hope 
that  his  caution  will  be  heeded  by  many  of  those  who 
hear  him.  It  never  awakens  him  to  wrath  against  man- 
kind at  large  and  to  scornful  contempt  for  the  human 
race  as  a  whole.  It  helps  him  to  laugh  out  loud  rather 
than  to  weep  or  to  scold.  It  is  kindly  and  not  unchari- 
table. It  prevents  him  from  idealizing  humanity  and  it 
helps  him  to  keep  his  grip  on  reality,  on  things  as  they  are. 

Moliere  has  little  aptitude  for  metaphysical  speculation. 
His  philosophy  is  not  spiritualized;  rather  is  it  like  his 
religion,  distinctly  terrestrial.  Things  celestial  did  not 
easily  attract  him;  and  the  circle  of  his  interests  was 
contained  in  this  world.  To  say  this  is  to  say  that  he 
was  not  religious  by  temperament  and  that  his  morality 


3z6  MOLIERE 

was  but  little  touched  with  emotion.  Here  again  he 
recalls  Montaigne,  whose  influence  on  him  is  visible  at 
every  stage  of  his  intellectual  development.  Both  of 
them  accept  the  church  as  they  chance  to  find  it,  taking 
it  as  a  matter  of  government  and  little  concerned  with  its 
mysteries.  There  is  no  hypocrisy  in  their  conforming 
to  its  minimum  requirements;  nor  is  there  in  this  any 
sacrifice  of  conviction,  since  a  deeply  rooted  religious 
conviction  was  as  conspicuously  lacking  in  the  one  as  in 
the  other.  Neither  of  them  cared  to  take  thought  about 
the  matter,  not  holding  any  doctrine  or  any  dogma  im- 
portant enough  to  quarrel  about  or  to  reward  argument. 
When  religious  disputes  ran  high  Montaigne  and  Mo- 
liere  passed  by  on  the  other  side,  not  tempted  even  to 
look  on  at  the  faction  fight.  They  were  well  pleased  that 
so  long  as  a  man  kept  peace  with  the  church  and  did 
what  it  demanded,  he  was  free  to  have  his  own  opinions, 
even  if  he  had  better  keep  these  to  himself.  Perhaps 
Moliere  did  not  even  take  the  trouble  to  have  opinions  of 
his  own  about  religion — although  we  may  doubt  whether 
he  would  have  actually  approved  the  dogma  of  the  fall 
of  man  any  more  than  Montaigne  really  believed  in  any 
doctrine  of  total  depravity.  He  took  his  religion  not 
exactly  on  faith,  but  by  tradition,  receiving  it  as  a  con- 
vention of  society.  Passionate  as  he  might  be,  he  was  not 
sentimental  and  not  emotional;  and  he  could  work  his 
own  code  of  morality  and  expound  his  vision  of  life 
without  bothering  his  head  any  more  about  its  spirituality 
than  about  its  materiality.  In  other  words  his  religion 
was  not  so  much  personal  as  it  was  social;  and  very 
likely  he  would  have  been  willing  enough  to  accept  La 
Rochefoucauld's  assertion  that  "most  of  the  devout  give 
us  a  distaste  for  devotion  itself." 


MOLIERE  THE  MAN  327 

There  is  a  far  closer  resemblance  between  Moliere  and 
those  conforming  skeptics  Rabelais  and  Montaigne,  than 
there  is  between  him  and  the  sincerely  religious  Pascal, 
whose  'Provincial  Letters'  undoubtedly  broadened  the 
scope  of  Moliere' s  larger  comedies.  But  Moliere  has  his 
point  of  contact  with  Pascal  in  that  they  both  submit 
themselves  to  the  government  of  pure  reason,  whereas 
religion  demands  an  element  of  poetry,  if  that  word  may 
serve  to  designate  something  which  is  not  easy  to  define. 
This  poetic  element  of  religion  is  lacking  in  Pascal, 
humble  as  was  his  piety.  Perhaps  we  can  see  more 
clearly  into  Moliere  when  we  recall  what  Sainte-Beuve 
has  written  about  Pascal,  who  has  "a  mind  logical,  geo- 
metric, anxious  as  to  causes,  fine,  clear,  eloquent,"  and 
who  therefore  "represents  the  perfection  of  human  un- 
derstanding in  what  this  understanding  has  that  is  most 
definite,  most  distinct,  most  detached  in  its  relation  to 
the  universe."  Moliere  is  not  Pascal,  of  course;  in 
many  ways  he  is  the  diametric  opposite  of  Pascal;  but 
not  a  little  of  this  characterization  of  Pascal  is  applicable 
also  to  Moliere,  whose  mind  was  also  logical,  lucid  and 
eloquent,  and  whose  understanding  was  definite  and 
distinct. 

Ill 

Danger  besets  every  attempt  to  compact  a  composite 
race  into  a  single  formula;  and  yet  manifest  and  manifold 
exceptions  may  not  invalidate  a  general  definition  if  only 
that  has  been  guardedly  drawn  up.  The  inhabitants  of 
different  countries  differ;  and  it  is  not  impossible,  even 
if  it  is  not  easy,  to  indicate  the  deeper  lines  of  cleavage 
between  two  nationalities.  The  French  are  like  the 
Greeks  of  old  in  their  regard  for  reason  and  in  their  reli- 


328  MOLIERE 

ance  on  intelligence  as  though  it  were  sufficient  for  all 
things.  They  are  like  the  Latins,  whose  traditions  they 
have  inherited,  in  their  respect  for  order  and  for  propor- 
tion, even  at  the  expense  of  an  artificial  sharpness  ot  out- 
line and  even  at  the  cost  of  a  certain  hardness,  which  is 
evident  enough  in  spite  of  their  attitude  of  sympathetic 
comprehension.  They  are  like  the  Celts,  who  contributed 
so  large  an  element  to  their  population,  in  their  social 
attributes,  in  their  irresistible  desire  to  stand  well  with 
their  fellows,  in  their  facility  of  speech,  in  their  ease  and 
their  gaiety,  in  their  keen  sense  of  the  ridiculous  and  their 
light-hearted  mockery. 

They  are  unlike  the  Germans  in  that  they  lack  the 
aptitude  for  philosophical  speculation,  preferring  what  is 
clear  and  precise  to  what  is  vaguely  suggestive;  they  have 
also  less  lyric  gift  than  the  Germans,  less  dreamy  senti- 
ment. And  they  are  also  free  from  the  excessive  individ- 
ualism of  the  English-speaking  race,  with  its  impatience 
of  authority  and  its  insistent  demand  for  freedom.  Per- 
haps this  is  because  they  have  less  of  the  essential  energy 
which  characterizes  the  Anglo-Saxon  stock  and  which 
often  expresses  itself  in  imagination.  And  as  they  do 
not  possess  this,  they  do  not  greatly  value  it,  preferring 
the  qualities  they  have  in  its  stead.  As  Nisard  put  it 
admirably,  in  France  "reason,  which  is  the  common  bond 
of  all  men,  is  more  highly  esteemed  than  imagination, 
which  disperses  them  and  isolates  them/'  This  is  why 
the  French  are  superior  to  all  other  modern  races  in  their 
mastery  of  prose,  which  is  the  instrument  of  reason  and 
of  social  intercourse.  This  is  why  they  are  less  likely 
to  excel  in  the  loftier  regions  of  poetry  which  demands 
rather  the  isolating  imagination. 

Here  also  we  can  find  the  explanation  why  the  French 


MOLIERE  THE  MAN  329 

have  surpassed  all  other  peoples  in  comedy,  which  is  the 
picture  of  society  and  which  must  be  a  product  of  the 
intelligence,  while  their  tragedy,  perhaps  the  most  char- 
acteristic department  of  all  their  literature,  is  not  uni- 
versally acceptable,  and  is  indeed  completely  satisfactory 
only  to  the  French  themselves.  "Such  is  this  race," 
said  one  of  the  acutest  of  French  critics,  Taine,  who  had 
also  a  wide  outlook  over  the  other  nations,  "such  is  this 
race,  the  most  Attic  of  the  moderns,  less  poetic  than  the 
ancient,  but  as  keen,  with  a  mind  exquisite  rather  than 
great,  endowed  rather  with  taste  than  with  genius,  sensual 
but  without  grossness  or  excessive  ardor,  not  moral  but 
sociable  and  gentle,  not  reflective  but  capable  of  grasping 
ideas,  and  all  ideas,  even  the  highest,  in  spite  of  their 
mockery  and  their  gaiety." 

When  Taine  wrote  this  he  had  in  mind  La  Fontaine, 
whom  he  put  forward  as  the  embodiment  of  racial  char- 
acteristics. But  La  Fontaine  seems  a  little  too  narrow 
in  his  vision  and  a  little  too  restricted  in  his  productivity 
to  be  received  as  an  acceptable  representative  in  literature 
of  the  national  type.  Moliere  is  a  larger  figure  and  fitter 
for  this  preeminence.  We  find  in  him  the  characteristics 
of  the  race  more  boldly  displayed.  He  stands  forward 
as  the  chiet  figure  in  all  French  literature,  not  only  be- 
cause of  his  ample  genius,  which  causes  his  work  to  tran- 
scend the  boundaries  of  a  single  language  and  to  attain 
the  universal,  but  because  in  him  better  than  in  any  other 
French  author  we  find  the  permanent  and  essential 
qualities  of  the  French  summed  up  and  condensed  once 
for  all. 

As  La  Fontaine  is  too  limited  in  his  scope  to  withstand 
comparison  with  Moliere,  so  Rabelais  is  too  exaggerated 
and  Montaigne  too  skeptical  in  his  curiosity.  Pascal  is  too 


330  MOLIERE 

religious;  and  Voltaire  is  too  cynical  and  disintegrating. 
Victor  Hugo  is  too  Teutonic  and  too  individual;  and 
Balzac  is  too  tense  and  too  confused.  Better  than  any  of 
them  does  Moliere  express  the  complexity  of  the  national 
type.  In  his  works  we  cannot  help  discovering  all  the 
best  qualities  of  the  French,  the  play  of  wit,  the  sense  of 
humor,  the  keen  intelligence,  the  reasoning  faculty,  the 
social  instinct  and  the  subtle  insight  into  character.  And 
whatever  we  may  fail  to  find  in  his  writings,  we  are  not 
likely  to  be  able  to  perceive  often  in  the  other  authors  of 
his  language.  Moliere  is  the  foremost  figure  of  all  French 
liter ature^  as  Dante  and  Cervantes  and  Shakspere  are  the 
leaders  in  their  several  tongues. 

IV 

"Order  and  clearness,  logic  and  precision,  severity  of 
composition  and  finish  of  style,"  these,  so  Brunetiere  de- 
clared, have  ever  been  the  ideals  of  French  writers;  and 
never  were  these  ideals  more  deliberately  sought  and 
more  often  attained  than  during  the  classical  period,  which 
almost  coincided  with  the  life  of  Louis  XIV.  We  are 
wont  to  look  upon  Boileau  as  the  exponent  of  the.  classical 
theories;  but  when  he  codified  the  rules  of  literary  art 
he  was  only  setting  in  array  the  scattered  precepts  already 
accepted  in  the  practice  of  his  elder  contemporaries.  He 
did  not  descend  from  the  mountain  with  a  new  revelation, 
carrying  the  tables  of  the  law  in  his  hand. 

The  classical  theory  as  Boileau  maintained  it  was 
partly  the  result  of  the  French  acceptance  of  the  principles 
worked  out  by  the  Italian  critics  of  the  Renascence,  who 
deduced  from  Aristotle  the  doctrine  of  the  three  unities 
and  the  separation  of  the  comic  and  the  tragic.  But  it 


MOLIERE  THE  MAN  331 

was  modified  by  the  social  instinct  of  the  French  them- 
selves and  by  their  desire  for  simplicity  of  construction 
and  for  clarity  of  treatment.  It  imposed  on  all  writers  the 
duty  of  thinking  about  their  readers  as  well  as  about  them- 
selves, and  of  so  presenting  what  they  had  to  say  that 
it  might  be  most  readily  received.  They  were  expected 
to  shun  eccentricity,  exaggeration,  and  awkwardness,  and 
to  avoid  overt  individuality.  They  were  to  keep  to  the 
middle  of  the  road,  not  straying  from  the  beaten  path. 
They  were  expected  to  appeal,  if  not  to  the  average  man, 
at  least  to  the  general  reader,  who  might  be  supposed  to 
have  derived  from  his  general  reading  a  common  fund  of 
knowledge  and  a  common  stock  of  ideas.  This  led  them 
to  generalize,  to  seek  the  typical,  and  to  deal  with  every 
theme  broadly  and  boldly  in  its  larger  aspects,  not  de- 
laying long  over  individual  peculiarities. 

Moliere  is  the  chief  figure  of  all  French  literature  and 
especially  of  this  classical  period;  he  holds  this  position 
not  only  because  he  happened  to  live  under  Louis  XIV 
and  because  he  painted  the  society  of  that  period,  not  only 
because  he  was  the  most  indubitable  genius  of  the  era,  but 
also  because  he  accepted  the  classical  theory  and  con- 
formed his  practice  to  it  and  found  himself  at  ease  within 
it.  Corneille  yielded  to  it  a  little  unwillingly  and  kept 
chafing  against  its  bonds;  Racine,  whose  range  was  far 
narrower,  was  really  a  disciple  of  Moliere,  artfully  apply- 
ing to  tragedy  the  method  which  Moliere  had  exemplified 
in  comedy.  Racine  was  the  result  of  the  rigid  applica- 
tion of  the  French  classical  dogmas,  and  he  was  therefore 
most  fully  appreciated  by  his  own  countrymen.  He  lacked 
breadth  of  interest;  he  has  never  won  wide  acceptance 
outside  of  France.  Corneille  has  found  more  admirers  in 
other  countries,  partly  because  he  was  not  really  in  sym- 


332  MOLIERE 

pathjL-^jth__the  fundamental  principles  of  the  classicists. 
He  was  a  Norman,  with  an  almost  Teutonic  individualism; 
and  he  delighted  in  the  stark  assertion  of  the  human  will, 
which  strengthens  his  drama,  no  doubt,  but  which  appears 
sometimes  to  be  almost  anarchistic  when  contrasted  with 
the  uniform  acceptance  of  the  social  bond,  as  we  see  this 
in  Racine  and  in  Moliere. 

It  is  the  better  side  of  the  classical  period  that  Moliere 
represents,  not  its  excesses  or  its  weaknesses.  He  avoids 
the  stately  artificiality,  which  is  the  besetting  sin  of  the 
period,  and  which  disappoints  us  in  the  architecture  of 
Versailles,  for  example;  and  he  never  relaxes  into  the 
empty  grandiloquence  discoverable  occasionally  even  in 
Corneille.  He  is  natural  always;  he  neither  soars  too 
high  nor  sinks  too  low;  he  keeps  in  mind  his  spectators 
and  he  manages  to  express  himself  fully  while  he  is  de- 
lighting them.  The  drama  must  be  the  most  social  of 
the  arts,  not  to  say  the  most  democratic.  It  has  been 
called  "a  function  of  the  crowd";  and  it  is  necessarily 
the  art  which  must  make  the  broadest  appeal  to  the  people 
as  a  whole.  Perhaps  this  is  the  reason  that  the  doctrine 
of  the  theorists  of  classicism  was  most  directly  applied  to 
the  drama.  The  Abbe  d'Aubignac  had  published  his 
treatise  on  dramatic  art  a  year  before  Moliere's  return 
to  Paris;  and  while  Moliere's  practical  sense  as  a  play- 
wright prevented  his  blind  adhesion  to  the  rules  as  the 
theorists  proclaimed  them,  and  while  he  asserted  again 
and  again  that  the  chief  rule  of  all  was  to  give  pleasure — 
an  assertion  made  also  more  than  once  by  both  Corneille 
and  Racine — he  never  set  himself  in  opposition  to  the 
theorists,  and  indeed  defended  himself  against  the  charge 
that  he  had  violated  their  "rules."  Even  if  he  did  not 
care  about  them  very  much,  he  conformed  to  them— 


MOLIERE  THE  MAN  333 

except  in  'Don  Juan,'  where  his  Spanish  story  required 
a  departure  from  the  unity  of  place. 

At  bottom,  Moliere,  like  Shakspere,  cared  little  for  any 
dramaturgic  theories.  Those  which  he  took  occasion  to 
express  are  the  result  of  his  own  methods.  His  theories 
did  not  control  his  methods;  rather  do  his  methods  control 
his  theories.  As  a  result  his  theories  and  his  methods 
were  in  accord;  and  he  is  never  caught  in  contradiction 
with  himself — as  Zola  is,  for  example,  declaiming  in 
favor  of  naturalism,  while  working  if  not  romantically, 
at  least  epically.  As  it  happened  by  good  fortune,  the 
principles  of  dramatic  art  proclaimed  by  the  critics  of 
his  own  time  suited  Moliere's  genius,  and  perhaps  even 
aided  its  expansion.  His  composition  is  lucid  and  logical;  \ 
and  it  may  be  that  we  do  not  at  first  perceive  his  richness 
in  ideas,  because  they  are  presented  so  clearly  and  so 
unpretentiously.  His  plays  are  swift  in  movement  and 
clear  in  outline,  without  hesitancy  or  confusion.  He 
knows  in  advance  what  he  is  going  to  do  and  he  does  it 
with  the  unerring  certainty  of  a  mathematical  demon- 
stration. 

He  accepts  the  unity  of  action,  the  unity  of  place  and 
the  unity  of  time;  he  gives  us  a  simple  story,  acted  out  in 
one  place  and  within  twenty-four  hours;  and  he  adds  to 
these  three  the  unity  of  character.  Perhaps  it  ought  to 
be  said  rather  that  the  unity  of  character  is  the  direct 
result  of  the  unity  of  time,  since  a  human  being  cannot 
greatly  change  within  the  space  of  a  single  day.  He 
presents  his  chief  characters  with  logical  completeness, 
making  them  coherent  and  self-explanatory.  They  are 
never  inconsistent  or  self-contradictory.  We  are  never 
left  in  doubt  as  to  the  aim  and  as  to  the  motives  of  Alceste 
as  we  may  be  as  to  those  of  Hamlet.  Moliere's  psychology, 


334  MOLIERE 

deep  and  searching  as  it  is,  is  also  free  from  excessive 
complication.  Although  all  his  great  characters  are  in- 
dividual as  well  as  typical,  he  tends  toward  the  type— 
which  was  in  accord  with  the  theory  of  the  classicists. 
Harpagon  is  a  recognizable  human  being,  of  course,  but 
he  is  also  the  embodiment  of  avarice  itself;  and  herein  is 
where  Harpagon  differs  from  Grandet,  who  is  individual 
even  more  than  he  is  typical. 

The  gap  that  yawns  between  classicism  and  realism 
is  most  evident  when  we  compare  Balzac's  concrete  pres- 
entation of  his  characters  with  the  abstract  methods  of 
Moliere.  Balzac  relates  his  figures  to  their  backgrounds. 
Moliere  generalizes  and  avoids  the  specific;  the  persons 
in  his  plays  are  known  to  us  only  as  they  appear  in  these 
plays.  There  are  few  details  of  contemporary  life  to  be 
gleaned  in  Moliere,  where  there  is  a  rich  harvest  in  Balzac, 
—details  about  trade  and  money,  about  education  and 
heredity.  There  are  in  Moliere  very  scant  indications  even 
of  the  social  condition  of  the  characters.  Who  is  Alceste, 
for  example,  and  what  is  his  position  in  society  ?  These 
things  we  may  infer,  if  we  choose,  but  we  are  not  spe- 
cifically informed  by  the  dramatist.  Who  is  Tartuffe, 
and  where  did  he  come  from  ?  What  have  been  his 
earlier  adventures  ?  Orgon  has  only  a  label  for  a  name, 
although  his  mother  is  Madame  Pernelle.  In  all  Moli- 
ere's  comedies  Monsieur  Jourdain  and  Monsieur  de  Pour- 
ceaugnac  are  the  only  leading  characters  who  have  names 
of  their  own.  And  this  is  quite  in  accord  with  the  clas- 
sical theory,  which  approved  of  an  abstract  presentation, 
and  which  shunned  the  concrete  as  too  personal  and  not 
sufficiently  generalized.  Yet  his  willing  acceptance  of 
this  principle  of  the  classicists  does  not  loosen  Moliere's 
grip  of  reality.  He  may  choose  to  present  his  characters 


MOLIERE  THE  MAN  335 

in  a  different  fashion,  but  they  do  not  yield  to  Balzac's 
in  their  actuality,  in  their  vitality. 


There  may  be  a  hint  of  hardness  now  and  then  in 
Moliere,  for  his  intellect  controlled  his  emotion;  but 
there  is  no  bitterness,  no  trace  of  the  acerbity  we  cannot 
help  finding  in  Beaumarchais.  Moliere  saw  only  the  glo- 
rious beginning  of  the  reign  of  a  beloved  king,  whereas 
Beaumarchais  beheld  the  exposed  shame  of  a  degraded 
and  degrading  monarchy  tottering  to  its  fall.  We  do  not 
catch  in  Moliere's  comedies  that  note  of  revolt  which 
rings  through  the  satiric  plays  of  Beaumarchais;  nor  is 
there  any  exhibition  by  Moliere  of  the  sophistry  of 
Rousseau  or  the  cynicism  of  Diderot.  He  had  no  hatreds, 
except  that  he  desperately  despised  pretenders  of  all  sorts. 
He  was  too  gentle  and  too  kindly  for  any  detestation  of 
individuals.  He  was  not  vindictive,  even  toward  Racine, 
who  had  acted  meanly  toward  him.  He  was  generous  in 
temper  as  well  as  liberal  with  money.  Grimarest  de- 
rived from  Baron  more  than  one  anecdote  setting  forth 
his  open-handedness  and  the  delicacy  of  his  charity. 

Even  if  a  little  disenchanted,  Moliere  had  no  grudge 
against  humanity.  He  was  companionable;  and  he 
joyed  in  gathering  his  friends  about  him.  Boileau  and 
La  Fontaine  were  habitual  guests  of  the  country  house 
he  had  at  Auteuil  in  the  later  years  of  his  life.  In  their 
society  he  found  relief  from  his  abiding  melancholy — 
that  melancholy  which  often  accompanies  the  broadest 
humor.  Aristophanes  may  have  been  without  it  to  his  loss; 
but  Cervantes  had  it  for  a  certainty,  despite  his  manly 
fortitude;  and  Swift  was  possessed  by  it.  They  had  all  of 


336  MOLIERE 

them  command  over  the  springs  of  laughter;  they  could 
all  be  gay  with  hearty  expansion  and  with  irresistible 
comic  force;  but  none  the  less  they  had  their  days  of  de- 
pression. Life  did  not  always  wear  its  most  amusing 
aspects  in  Moliere's  eyes;  and  the  deeper  he  saw  into 
the  meanness  of  mankind,  into  its  pettiness  and  its  self- 
ishness, the  harder  it  must  have  been  for  him  to  keep 
always  to  the  tone  of  comedy.  But  he  never  let  any  vision 
of  the  darker  vices  of  humanity  obscure  his  outlook  on 
life.  He  retained  his  optimism  to  the  end;  he  never  lost 
his  belief  in  nature. 

It  is  in  this  trust  in  nature,  when  nature  is  controlled  by 
reason,  that  we  can  find  the  clue  to  Moliere's  philosophy. 
It  is  this  regard  for  what  is  natural  which  urges  him  on  to 
expose  pretension  and  affectation  and  hypocrisy.  It  ex- 
plains his  attacks  on  the  precieuses,  on  the  physicians  and 
on  the  bigots.  Above  all  else  he  cherishes  sincerity  and 
simplicity — especially  sincerity  in  men  and  simplicity  in 
women.  It  is  his  regard  for  nature  again  which  leads  him 
to  be  on  the  side  of  the  young  lovers  in  his  plays  when 
their  natural  mating  is  opposed  by  a  parental  selfishness 
unnatural  in  his  eyes.  He  seems  to  hold  that  every  one 
of  us  has  a  natural  right  to  his  or  her  share  of  happiness 
and  even  of  pleasure,  and  that  this  natural  right  is  limited 
only  by  the  rights  of  others. 

His  morality  is  not  religious  but  social.  He  was  a  self- 
controlled  man,  as  his  whole  life  proves;  and  he  had 
neither  time  nor  health  for  dissipation.  But  there  was 
nothing  ascetic  in  his  sobriety.  He  had  no  longing  for 
renunciation  or  for  self-sacrifice  for  its  own  sake;  these 
were  Christian  virtues  that  he  did  not  appreciate  or  un- 
derstand. Probably  these  appeared  to  him  unnatural 
and  therefore  not  to  be  cultivated.  It  is  a  very  mundane 


MOLIERE  THE  MAN  337 

morality,  this  of  Moliere's;  and  it  has  its  obvious  inade- 
quacy. Yet  it  served  his  purpose.  At  bottom,  he  had 
himself  a  character  of  transparent  simplicity  and  of  un- 
alterable sincerity.  He  was  in  no  way  self-conscious,  self- 
centered  or  egotistic. 

It  may  be  because  his  morality  js  rather  earthy  than 
ethereal  that  he  has  found  little  favor  with  women.  He 
is  too  direct,  too  keen-eyed  and  too  plain-spoken  to  please 
them  greatly.  He  appears  to  them  lacking  in  passion 
and  in  poetry.  Certainly  he  fails  to  idealize  them,  and 
they  resent  this,  finding  his  comedies  without  that  which 
delights  them  and  flatters  them  in  Shakspere's  plays. 
Shakspere  has  heroines  in  plenty,  even  if  he  has  few 
heroes;  Moliere  has  not  even  heroes.  He  writes  for  men 
who  know  life  and  who  want  to  know  it  better,  and  not 
for  women  who  prefer  to  ignore  it.  His  plays  are  meant 
for  men,  who  relish  reality,  and  not  for  women,  who  are 
delighted  rather  with  romance.  He  appeals  to  the  manly 
love  of  veracity  even  if  it  is  harsh  or  brutal,  not  to  the 
womanly  shrinking  from  certain  revelations  of  the  truth, 
even  if  it  cannot  be  denied. 

It  is  a  fact,  also,  that  women  do  not  greatly  care  for 
any  of  the  bolder  humorists,  not  even  for  Shakspere  when 
he  is  at  his  richest  and  broadest,  as  in  Falstaff,  for  in- 
stance. They  draw  back  from  the  hearty  animality  of  it, 
the  healthy  grossness,  which  is  a  necessary  element  of 
large  genius,  and  which  we  can  discover  in  Luther  and 
Franklin  and  Lincoln  as  well  as  in  Shakspere  and 
Moliere.  Women  like  to  shut  their  eyes  to  this  lower 
aspect  of  our  common  humanity;  and  they  see  no  reason 
why  attention  should  be  called  to  it.  They  often  prefer 
the  feeble  and  unhealthy  idealism  of  Shelley  and  of 
Poe,  which  seeks  to  soar  above  the  soil  and  which  only 


338  MOLIERE 

too  often  falls  into  the  mire.  Even  when  humor  is  not 
free  and  penetrating,  •  women  cannot  help  preferring  a 
more  pathetic  treatment  of  life.  They  would  rather  weep 
than  laugh.  And  there  are  no  tears  in  Moliere,  but  only 
the  true  comedy  of  mankind,  with  the  mirth  that  clears 
the  air  and  helps  us  to  live  our  lives  in  this  world. 
As  Goethe  said,  "Moliere  is  a  genuine  man;  there  is 
nothing  distorted  about  him.  He  chastened  men  by 
drawing  them  just  as  they  are." 


CHAPTER  XX 
MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST 

I 

MOLIERE  was  only  fifty-one  when  he  died,  and  all  ex- 
cept two  of  his  thirty  plays  had  been  written  in  the 
final  fourteen  years  of  his  life.  From  1659  to  1673  there 
was  no  single  year  in  which  he  did  not  produce  at  least 
one  play;  and  there  were  four  years  in  which  he  brought 
out  three  pieces  within  the  twelvemonth.  In  all  but  one 
of  these  plays  he  acted  himself;  and  he  also  directed  the 
affairs  of  the  company.  He  had  need  to  be  both  fertile 
and  facile  in  these  later  years  when  the  demands  on  him 
were  incessant  and  imperative.  Fortunately  for  him  he 
had  served  a  long  apprenticeship  in  the  provinces,  solving 
the  mysteries  of  the  art  of  playmaking  and  amassing  a 
store  of  observations  of  human  nature.  When  at  last 
he  was  able  to  return  to  the  capital,  his  genius  ripened 
swiftly.  The  dramatists  have  usually  begun  to  produce 
plays  when  they  were  in  the  first  flush  of  youth,  in  sharp 
contrast  with  the  novelists,  who  have  often  flowered  late 
in  life.  Moliere,  however,  was  forty-two  when  he  wrote 
'Tartuffe,'  forty-three  when  he  followed  it  with  'Don 
Juan,'  forty-four  when  he  brought  forth  the  'Misanthrope/ 
and  fifty  when  he  made  fun  of  the  'Femmes  Savantes/ 
Perhaps  a  part  of  the  deeper  insight  and  the  wider  vision 
of  these  masterpieces  of  comedy  is  due  to  the  relative  ma- 
turity of  their  author  when  he  composed  them. 

339 


340  MOLIERE 

As  we  consider  the  strict  succession  of  his  comedies 
we  can  trace  the  steady  growth  of  his  power  as  a  drama- 
tist. In  the  very  earliest  of  his  plays  we  meet  with  his 
characteristic  gayety,  animation  and  swiftness.  He  is 
already  a  master  of  the  craft  of  playmaking;  he  has 
achieved  constructive  skill;  and  he  has  attained  to  asbo- 
lute  certainty  of  execution.  But  his  humor  then  is  not 
so  rich  as  it  revealed  itself  in  the  later  plays;  it  is  more 
or  less  external  in  these  earlier  pieces,  arising  rather 
from  deliberate  ingenuity  of  artificial  situation  than  from 
piercing  observation  of  life  and  character.  Indeed,  in  the 
*  Etourdi,'  for  example,  our  interest  is  aroused  mainly  by 
the  situation  and  scarcely  at  all  by  the  characters,  who 
are  little  more  than  profile  figures,  created  to  carry  out 
the  plot. 

Then  as  he  slowly  gains  confidence  in  himself  and  as  he 
steadily  wins  authority  with  the  public,  he  puts  more 
and  more  human  nature  into  his  comedies,  and  he  relies 
less  and  less  on  the  easier  and  more  mechanical  effects  of 
equivoke  and  surprise.  Yet  he  advances  very  cautiously 
indeed,  desirous  of  carrying  his  audience  along  with  him 
and  unwilling  ever  to  disconcert  them  by  too  rapid  a 
stride  forward.  The  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  is  already  a 
comedy-of-manners,  but  it  is  still  a  comedy-of-intrigue;  it 
has  a  thesis  and  it  contains  a  moral,  but  its  form  is  that 
of  the  familiar  comedy-of-masks.  Not  until  he  wrote 
'Tartuffe'  did  he  emancipate  himself  completely  from  this 
convenient  Italian  frame.  When  he  composed  'Tartuffe* 
he  perfected  a  new  formula  of  his  own,  fit  for  all  the 
higher  efforts  of  his  comic  genius,  used  by  him  again  in 
the  'Misanthrope*  and  in  the  'Femmes  Savantes,'  and 
now  accepted  by  every  writer  of  comedy  in  every  mod- 
ern language. 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  341 

Yet,  even  after  he  had  gone  forward  to  high  comedy  he 
never  shrank  from  going  back  to  low  comedy,  for  he  was 
master  of  both,  and  he  needed  both  to  express  himself 
completely.  Even  in  the  last  year  or  two  of  his  life,  in  the 
'Fourberies  de  Scapin,'  he  utilized  again  the  framework  of 
the  comedy-of-masks,  which  he  knew  to  be  permanently 
popular  with  the  Parisian  playgoers.  The  later  plays 
on  this  Italian  model  are  only  superficially  like  the  earlier, 
as  we  can  see  plainly  when  we  compare  the  'Fourberies 
de  Scapin'  with  the  'Etourdi,'  a  comparison  which  easily 
establishes  Moliere's  constant  progress  as  a  comic  play- 
wright. In  both  pieces  the  situations  are  brisk,  lively 
and  ingenious;  but  the  earlier  play  is  dependent  solely 
on  these  situations,  while  the  later  play  is  carried  by  its 
characters,  whcnare  far  more  solidly  and  amply  conceived 
than  those  that  appear  in  its  more  primitive  prede- 
cessor. Here  once  more  there  is  a  Shaksperean  parallel; 
the  English  dramatist  willingly  descended  to  farce  again 
when  he  put  together  the  'Merry  Wives  of  Windsor/ 
after  he  had  risen  to  the  more  delicate  comedy  of  the 
'Merchant  of  Venice.'  And  the  'Merry  Wives,'  it  may 
be  noted  also,  farce  as  it  must  be  called,  is  peopled  with 
characters  recognizably  human,  and  far  more  real  than 
those  in  'Love's  Labor's  Lost,'  wherein  the  resolution  to 
be  clever  is  quite  as  obvious  as  in  the  'Etourdi'  and 
wherein  the  humor  is  quite  as  external. 
(HUthough  Moliere,  in  more  than  half  of  his  comic  plays, 
chose  to  avail  himself  of  the  formula  of  the  comedy-of- 
masks,  assured  of  its  attractiveness  to  the  public  and  sat- 
isfied to  use  it  as  a  means  of  calling  forth  hearty  laugh- 
ter, he  was  in  fact  remarkably  prolific  in  the  invention  of 
new  dramatic  forms.  In  'Tartuffe'  and  the  'Femmes  Sa- 
vantes'  he  has  left  us  the  model  of  high  comedy.  In  the 


342  MOLIERE 

'Facheux'  he  contrives  the  first  protean  play,  in  which 
a  single  actor  can  appear  in  several  parts  in  swift  suc- 
cession. In  the  'Critique  de  1'Ecole  des  Femmes'  he 
puts  on  the  stage  a  piece  which  is  only  a  literary  criticism 
in  dialogue,  a  daring  feat  never  before  attempted.  In  the 
'Impromptu  de  Versailles'  he  takes  the  audience  behind 
the  curtain  and  makes  a  play  out  of  a  rehearsal,  an- 
ticipating Buckingham  and  Sheridan.  In  the  'Manage 
Force'  he  hits  on  the  fit  method  for  making  a  comedy- 
ballet.  In  'Psyche'  he  anticipates  grand  opera  with  all 
its  sustaining  spectacular  effects,  as  in  the  'Sicilien'  he 
suggests  the  future  opera-comique.  In  the  'Misanthrope' 
and  the  '  Avare'  he  creates  the  comedy-of-character,  which 
was  to  have  a  long  life  in  the  French  theater.  And  in  a 
host  of  other  pieces  he  leaves  us  interesting  variants  of  the 
comedy-of-intrigue  and  of  the  comedy-of-manners. 

II 

That  he  did  these  things  was  largely  due  to  the  fact 
that  he  was  not  only  a  dramatic  author,  but  also  a  the- 
atrical manager.  The  demands  of  the  manager  must  al- 
ways condition  the  work  of  the  author.  However  Moliere 
might  aspire  as  a  poet,  he  rarely  allows  his  ambition  as 
an  author  to  interfere  with  his  duty  to  the  company  he 
is  directing.  He  keeps  his  finger  on  the  pulse  of  the 
public,  and  when  it  fails  to  accept  what  he  has  given  it, 
he  never  hesitates  to  retrace  his  steps  and  to  provide  it 
with  what  he  knew  by  experience  it  is  certain  to  ap- 
prove. If  the  playgoers  of  Paris  will  not  accept  a 
heroic  comedy  like  'Don  Garcie,'  with  him  in  the  heroic 
part,  he  never  again  repeats  the  attempt.  If  the  '  Misan- 
thrope,' the  play  of  his  predilection,  proves  to  be  too  bare 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  343 

of  story  to  win  wide  popularity,  he  takes  the  warning  to 
heart  and  sustains  the  'Femmes  Savantes'  by  a  plot  more 
likely  to  arrest  attention  and  to  win  sympathy. 

Like  every  other  great  dramatic  poet  he  composed  his 
plays,  not  for  the  readers  of  posterity,  but  for  the  specta- 
tors of  his  own  time.  He  intended  them,  not  for  perusal, 
but  for  performance — by  actors,  in  a  theater  and  before 
an  audience — and  therefore  he  fitted  his  characters  to 
the  actors  who  were  going  to  impersonate  them,  he  ad- 
justed his  plots  to  the  playhouse  wherein  they  were  to  be 
exhibited,  and  he  kept  in  mind  always  the  likes  and  the 
dislikes  of  the  spectators  before  whom  his  plays  were  to 
be  acted,  whether  at  court  or  in  the  capital. 

Probably  he  did  not  do  these  things  any  more  con- 
scientiously than  Shakspere,  but  unfortunately  we  know 
far  less  about  the  company  of  the  Globe  in  London  than 
we  know  about  the  company  at  the  Palais  Royal  in  Paris. 
If  Hamlet,  who  is  "the  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mold  of 
form,"  is  also  "fat  and  scant  of  breath,"  we  may  surmise 
that  this  is  only  because  Burbage  was  beginning  to  put 
on  flesh.  If  Argan  in  the  'Malade  Imaginaire*  has  a 
cough,  we  know  that  this  was  because  Moliere  wrote  the 
part  for  himself,  after  his  own  cough  had  become  trouble- 
some. If  TartufFe  is  plump  and  well-favored,  this  may 
be  partly  because  the  character  was  composed  for  Du 
Croisy.  If  La  Fleche  in  the  'Avare'  limps,  we  can  dis- 
cover the  reason  in  the  fact  that  his  -part  was  written  for 
Moliere's  brother-in-law,  Bejart,  who  was  lame.  If  the 
Toinette  of  the  'Malade  Imaginaire'  and  the  Nicole  of  the 
'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme'  have  less  authority  than  the 
Dorine  of  *  TartufFe,'  and  a  more  infectious  joyfulness, 
although  the  three  characters  are  otherwise  very  much 
alike,  we  can  explain  this  easily  enough  when  we  remem- 


344  MOLIERE 

ber  that  Dorine  was  written  for  Madeleine  Bejart,  who 
had  played  many  a  leading  part  in  tragedy,  whereby  she 
gained  breadth  and  weight,  and  that  her  successor,  Mad- 
emoiselle Beauval,  for  whom  Nicole  and  Toinette  were 
composed,  was  a  younger  woman  of  less  experience,  but 
with  a  spontaneous  laugh  and  a  gift  of  bubbling  gayety. 

We  can  gage  the  range  of  Moliere's  own  art  as  an  actor 
when  we  recall  that  he  was  unfailingly  successful  in  the 
chief  comic  characters  of  a  large  majority  of  his  own 
plays.  He  did  not  appear  as  Tartuffe  or  as  Don  Juan, 
but  he  did  impersonate  Alceste,  Orgon  and  Argan,  Mas- 
carille,  Sganarelle  and  Scapin.  We  can  also  form  a  clear 
idea  of  the  very  remarkable  ability  of  his  wife  as  an  actress, 
when  we  call  the  roll  of  the  important  parts  with  which 
she  was  intrusted  and  in  which  she  was  completely 
successful,  according  to  all  contemporary  criticism.  She 
had  youth  and  charm,  even  if  not  acknowledged  beauty; 
but  these  qualities  alone  would  not  equip  her  for  the  per- 
formance of  characters  as  various  and  as  difficult  in  their 
several  degrees  as  the  Angeliques  of  'George  Dandin'  and 
of  the  '  Malade  Imaginaire,'  as  Elmire  and  Celimene  and 
Henriette.  We  can  be  sure  that  her  husband  would  never 
have  written  these  parts  for  her,  if  he  had  not  seen  in  her 
a  capacity  to  play  them  brilliantly. 

It  is  true,  of  course,  that  the  author  was  his  own  stage- 
manager,  and  that  he  insisted  on  educating  all  the  com- 
pany to  speak  his  lines  and  to  personate  his  characters 
exactly  as  he  intended.  It  is  probable  that  he  did  not 
spare  himself  in  the  trouble  he  took  in  the  training  of  his 
wife,  in  explaining  his  wishes  to  her  and  in  suggesting 
readings  and  gestures  and  business.  But  she  must  have 
had  the  native  gift  or  all  this  would  have  availed  little. 
Mrs.  Siddons  is  known  to  have  profited  by  many  an 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  345 

invaluable  suggestion  from  her  able  and  scholarly  brother, 
John  Philip  Kemble;  and  Rachel  did  her  best  only  after 
she  had  had  the  benefit  of  Samson's  advice.  But  with- 
out these  extraneous  aids  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Rachel 
would  have  been  eminent  in  their  profession;  and  so 
would  Armande  Bejart,  even  if  she  had  the  path  made 
smoother  before  her  by  the  genius  of  her  husband. 

In  certain  of  Moliere's  earliest  pieces  the  performers 
are  so  closely  identified  with  the  parts  they  impersonated, 
that  the  characters  are  called  by  the  actual  names  of  the 
actors  themselves, — Gros-Rene  in  the  '  Depit  Amoureux,' 
and  Jodelet,  La  Grange  and  Du  Croisy  in  the  '  Precieuses 
Ridicules.'  And  in  this  last  play  the  two  pretentious 
young  women  who  have  come  up  from  the  provinces 
are  known  only  as  Madelon  and  Cathos.  Brunetiere  sug- 
gested that  these  names  were  significant  in  themselves,  as 
Madame  de  Rambouillet  was  called  Catherine  and  Ma- 
demoiselle de  Scudery,  Madeleine.  But  this  ingenious 
suggestion  loses  most  of  its  point  when  we  remind  our- 
selves that  the  two  parts  were  played  by  Madeleine  Be- 
jart and  Catherine  de  Brie. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  by  more  than  one  commentator 
that,  although  Moliere  presents  many  fathers,  he  scarcely 
ever  introduces  a  mother,  and  that  he  gives  us  no  single 
portrayal  of  maternal  love,  in  spite  of  the  unusual 
strength  in  France  of  the  bond  between  mother  and  child. 
We  can  account  for  this  omission  by  recalling  the  fact 
that  Moliere's  own  mother  had  died  when  he  was  very 
young,  and  that  he  prefers  to  put  into  his  plays  no  senti- 
ment he  had  not  witnessed  at  first  hand.  This  explana- 
tion may  be  valid;  but  another  will  present  itself  to  any 
one  who  considers  closely  the  absolute  exactness  with 
which  the  dramatist  always  adjusts  his  comedies  to  the 


346  MOLIERE 

company  for  which  they  were  composed.  Moliere's  plays 
never  contain  any  character  for  whom  there  was  not  a  fit 
performer  already  attached  to  the  Palais-Royal;  and  he 
never  burdened  the  treasury  of  the  theater  with  the  cost 
of  a  special  engagement.  Now,  there  was  no  "old 
woman"  in  the  company,  and  the  occasional  elderly 
female  whom  Moliere  brings  on  the  stage  is  always  so 
vigorously  drawn  that  she  can  be  played  by  a  man. 
Madame  Pernelle  and  Madame  Jourdain,  Philaminte  and 
the  Comtesse  d'Escarbagnas  were  each  of  them  originally 
impersonated  by  a  male  actor,  capable  enough  of  depict- 
ing the  humorous  peculiarities  of  these  characters,  but 
probably  not  competent  to  suggest  the  tenderer  senti- 
ment of  motherhood. 


Ill 

Moliere's  comedies  are  not  more  consistently  fitted  to 
his  own  comedians  than  they  are  to  the  actual  stage  of  the 
theater  for  which  they  were  composed.  Even  the  more 
or  less  spectacular  comedy-ballets,  prepared  for  the  king 
and  the  court,  were  most  of  them  so  constructed  that  they 
could  be  brought  out  afterward  at  the  Palais-Royal  with 
little  loss  of  effect.  The  French  comedians  shared  this 
theater  with  the  Italian  comedians;  and  quite  possibly 
the  two  companies  had  a  common  stock  of  scenery.  Cer- 
tainly Moliere  is  constantly  employing  the  traditional  set  of 
Italian  comic  drama,  inherited,  it  may  be,  from  the  Latin, 
or  else  derived  from  the  permanent  scenery  that  Palladio 
built  upon  the  stage  in  his  theater  at  Vicenza.  This 
had  the  obvious  advantage  that  it  enabled  the  play- 
wright to  conform  to  the  unity  of  place  by  massing 
together  in  a  single  spot  the  residences  of  all  the  char- 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  347 

acters.  We  find  this  set  in  more  than  a  third  of  Mo- 
liere's  pieces. 

In  another  third  of  his  plays,  including  all  the  larger 
and  more  elevated  comedies,  the  scene  is  an  interior 
which  serves  for  all  the  acts.  In  but  two  or  three  plays 
does  Moliere  allow  himself  to  violate  the  unity  of  place; 
and  there  are  changes  of  scene  only  in  the  more  or  less 
spectacular  pieces,  'Don  Juan*  and  'Psyche.'  We  need 
to  bear  in  mind  always,  that  in  Moliere's  theater,  as  in 
Shakspere's,  spectators  were  permitted  to  have  seats  on 
the  stage  itself,  well  down  in  front.  At  the  Globe  in 
London  these  playgoers  had  to  provide  themselves  with 
stools,  which  they  procured  behind  the  arras  before  they 
came  forward;  whereas  at  the  Palais-Royal  they  seem  to 
have  been  placed  on  benches  that  ran  back  at  right  angles 
to  the  line  of  the  curtain.  The  presence  of  these  spectators 
on  the  stage,  hidden  from  the  audience  when  the  curtain 
fell,  but  able  to  see  whatever  went  on  behind  it,  deprived 
Moliere  of  the  modern  playwriter's  privilege  of  ending 
the  act  with  a  tableau.  At  the  Palais-Royal,  as  at  the 
Globe,  all  the  characters  had  to  make  their  exits  before 
the  end  of  the  act.  Indeed,  this  emptying  of  the  stage 
was  the  conventional  signal  that  the  act  was  over. 

With  a  part  of  the  audience  sitting  in  full  view  and 
with  the  important  episodes  always  acted  well  forward 
and  between  these  rows  of  spectators,  the  dramatist  could 
not  aim  at  the  pictorial  effects  which  the  more  modern 
playwright  has  at  his  command  in  our  latter-day  theaters. 
As  the  stage  was  only  dimly  lighted,  the  acting  had  to  take 
place  remote  from  the  scenery,  and  the  dramatist  could 
not  relate  his  characters  to  their  background.  He  could 
make  only  occasional  and  limited  use  of  properties  or  of 
furniture.  His  characters  had  to  stand,  or  at  least  he 


348  MOLIERE 

provided  seats  for  them  only  when  this  is  absolutely 
demanded  by  the  action — as  in  the  interview  between 
Elmire  and  Tartuffe,  when  she  sits  by  the  side  of  the  table 
under  which  Orgon  has  concealed  himself. 

This  extreme  simplicity  of  presentation  is  not  im- 
posed on  the  modern  stage,  free  of  all  spectators  and  seen 
through  the  picture-frame  of  the  proscenium.  But  it 
had  its  advantages  as  well  as  its  disadvantages.  For  one 
thing,  it  focused  interest  on  the  action  itself  and  on  the 
characters  who  were  taking  part  in  the  action.  And,  for 
another,  it  has  bestowed  on  the  play  itself  a  transport- 
ability which  few  modern  pieces  possess,  since  they  re- 
quire a  more  elaborate  scenic  adornment.  A  comedy  of 
Moliere's  could  be  acted  anywhere  and  anywhen,  almost 
without  preparation.  This  accounts  for  the  ease  with 
which  he  was  able  to  present  his  plays  in  private  houses. 
It  explains,  also,  why  his  comedies  are  now  performed 
at  the  Theatre-Francais  without  alteration,  omission  or 
transportation — without  any  of  the  hacking  and  man- 
gling which  is  absolutely  imperative  when  one  of  Shak- 
spere's  plays  is  presented  in  a  modern  playhouse. 

It  cannot  be  said  too  emphatically  or  too  often  that  the 
theater  for  which  Shakspere  wrote  was  semi-medieval, 
whereas  the  theater  for  which  Moliere  wrote  was  essen- 
tially modern,  even  if  it  did  not  contain  all  the  latest  im- 
provements. Shakspere's  theater  was  unroofed,  it  was 
illuminated  only  by  daylight,  and  its  stage  had  no  scen- 
ery. Moliere's  theater  was  roofed,  lighted  and  furnished 
with  scenery.  This  is  why  ^hakspere~is  a  most  unfortu- 
nate  modet  for  all  modern  poets,  whose  dramas  are  in- 
tended for  performance  in  the  playhouses  of  to-day. 
Coming  after  the  theater  had  given  up  the  semi-medieval 
methods  which  still  obtained  when  Corneille  wrote  his 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  349 

earlier  plays,  and  after  it  had  taken  on  conditions  not  radi- 
cally different  from  those  which  we  find  in  the  playhouse 
of  the  twentieth  century,  Moliere  was  fortunately  able  to 
anticipate  the  dramatic  form  still  acceptable  after  nearly 
three  hundred  years.  Indeed,  this  dramatic  form,  devised 
by  Moliere  and  exemplified  in  'Tartuffe,'  is  almost  iden- 
tical with  that  employed  by  Ibsen,  a  later  master  of  dra- 
maturgy, in  the  '  Pillars  of  Society/  and  in  the  *  Doll's 
House/ 


IV 

Moliere  did  not  study  his,  actors  and  his  theater  more 
persistently  than  he  studied  his  audiences.  He  knew 
them  intimately,  and  he  was  one  oFthem,  a  Parisian  by 
birth  and  breeding;  their  point  of  view  was  his  also;  and 
he  had  inherited  the  same  preferences  and  prejudices. 
He  knew  that  they  came  to  the  Palais-Royal  for  laugh- 
ter, first  of  all;  and  he  rarely  disappointed  them  of  this. 
He  was  ever  ready  to  give  them  what  they  were  seeking, 
although  he  often  put  before  them  stronger  meat  than 
they  had  asked  for.  Even  when  he  turned,  in  time,  to 
themes  not  comic  in  themselves,  he  was  careful  to  present 
these  from  the  most  humorous  standpoint  and  to  lighten 
them  and  brighten  them  with  episodic  characters  and 
situations  often  frankly  farcical.  He  was  glad  to  give  the 
contemporary  spectators  again  and  again  the  kind  of  comic 
play  that  they  had  most  enjoyed;  he  might  enrich  this 
comedy-of-intrigue  with  a  deeper  portrayal  of  character, 
but  he  did  not  depart  from  his  principles.  It  was  by  slow 
steps  that  he  ventured  to  advance  from  the  more  or  less 
mechanical  form  of  the  'Etourdi'  to  the  more  significant 
comedy  of  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes'  and  'Tartuffe.'  To 


350  MOLIERE 

the  very  end  Moliere  sought  for  laughter  even  when  he 
was  also  striving  to  stimulate  thought. 

"  Lasting  works  usually  have  pleased  all  classes  in  their 
own  time,"  said  Stedman  in  discussing  Whitman;  and 
this  shrewd  saying  is  exemplified  in  the  immediate  and 
enduring  popularity  of  Moliere's  plays.  The  Parisian 
playgoers  supported  his  theater  liberally  and  sturdily, 
even  while  his  enemies  were  shrilly  protesting.  These 
playgoers  knew  what  they  wanted  and  they  knew  where 
to  get  it.  That  they  valued  what  they  were  getting  as 
we  rate  it  to-day,  it  would  be  unreasonable  to  suppose. 
While  posterity  now  esteems  Moliere  chiefly  as  a  creator 
of  undying  characters,  his  contemporaries  held  him  in 
regard  as  a  humorist,  as  the  man  who  made  them  laugh  as 
an  author  and  at  whom  they  laughed  as  an  actor.  How- 
ever popular  he  may  be,  a  humorist  rarely  receives  re- 
cognition in  his  lifetime,  still  less  appreciation.  Rabelais, 
for  one,  was  highly  esteemed  as  a  scholar  and  as  a  phys- 
ician; but  contemporary  writers  scarcely  ever  mention  his 
books,  which  probably  seemed  to  them  too  low  and  too 
vulgar  to  demand  consideration  as  literature.  Cervantes, 
for  another,  survived  to  see  the  public  liking  for  his 
great  work  proved  by  the  eagerness  with  which  pirate 
publishers  reprinted  it;  yet  it  was  more  than  a  century 
after  his  death  before  the  discovery  was  made  that  'Don 
Quixote'  was  more  than  a  narrative  of  comic  misad- 
venture. 

"Humanity  moves  onward  like  an  army,"  so  Renan 
wrote  in  his  youth;  "great  men  are  the  scouts  in  advance, 
and  the  main  body  of  the  army  follows,  more  or  less 
near;  this  is  why  great  men  are  not  usually  known  in 
their  century — they  are  ahead."  This  may  be  true 
enough  of  the  philosophers  and  of  the  original  thinkers; 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  351 

but  it  can  never  be  true  of  the  dramatists,  since  they  can- 
not risk  themselves  too  far  ahead  of  the  main  body  of  their 
contemporaries.  Probably  no  dramatist  has  ever  been  an 
original  thinker,  in  the  largest  meaning  of  the  term,  just 
as  no  practical  statesman  has  ever  been.  Certainly  Shak- 
spere  and  Moliere  were  not  original  thinkers,  pioneers  in 
speculation,  any  more  than  Washington  or  Lincoln.  It 
was  not  their  function  to  carry  the  torch  ahead  and  to  lead 
the  way  into  unexplored  regions.  Rather  was  it  their 
duty  to  hold  up  a  lantern  so  as  to  illuminate  the  way  for 
the  main  body,  and  to  keep  the  stragglers  from  stumbling 
into  the  wrong  road.  It  is  because  Shakspere  and  Moliere 
were  not  original  thinkers,  but  interp_r_e.ters--o£  the  eternal 
truthT  wKictr~cTy  aloucT~to~be  set  forth  anew  for .  every 
generation,  it  is  because  they  kept  in  close  contact  with 
humanity,  wftTTlKeTrien  and  women  of  their  own  time, 
thaT  they  were  able  both  to  please  their  contempora- 
ries then  and  to  delight  us  now.  Human  nature  is  not 
changed  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye;  it  is  only  a  little  trans- 
formed with  the  revolving  centuries.  Men  are  men,  after 
all,  and  once  for  all;  and  the  portraits  painted  three  hun- 
dred years  ago  are  recognizable  to-day.  Macbeth  and 
Tartuffe  are  with  us  still;  their  souls  are  the  same,  even  if 
Macbeth  has  given  up  war  for  finance,  and  even  if  Tar- 
tuffe has  turned  from  religion  to  politics. 


Perhaps  it  is  due,  in  a  measure,  to  his  enforced  study  of 
the  public  he  had  to  please  that  Moliere  developed  so 
cautiously  and  tentatively  from  a  writer  of  brisk  farces 
into  the  master  of  high  comedy;  and  yet  this  retarded 
growth  may  be  ascribed  rather  to  the  absence  of  any 


352  MOLIERE 

model  for  his  guidance.  When  he  began  to  write,  the 
comic  drama  of  the  French  was  unreal;  it  was  under 
the  influence  of  Spanish  extravagance;  Scarron's  free 
adaptations  were  almost  unrelated  to  actual  life;  and  if 
there  was  more  observation  and  reflection  in  Corneille's 
comedies,  there  was  still  not  a  little  superficiality.  Moliere 
strives  for  the  real,  but  he  is  his  own  contemporary,  after 
all,  conscious  that  he  has  to  please  these  contemporaries; 
and  in  the  mere  mechanism  of  his  plots  he  never  shrinks 
from  utilizing  traditional  artificialities  to  bring  characters 
together,  or  to  marry  off  a  young  couple  summarily  when 
the  play  has  to  end  somehow,  so  that  the  laughing  spec- 
tators might  leave  the  theater  satisfied  that  all  was  as  it 
should  bej 

In  this  less  important  matter  he  may  be  careless  at 
times;  but  he  is  never  careless  in  matters  that  count. 
There  is  a  sharp  contrast  between  his  occasional  romanti- 
cism in  plot-making  and  the  eternal  reality  of  his  character- 
drawing.  We  have  no  reason  to  doubt  that  he  knew  as  well 
as  we  do,  that  *  George  Dandin'  ends  where  it  begins, 
and  the  'Misanthrope'  also.  When  we  have  been  made 
acquainted  with  the  chief  characters  of  these  two  come- 
dies and  with  the  contradiction  in  which  they  have  en- 
tangled themselves,  the  play  may  come  to  an  end,  for 
the  dramatist  has  accomplished  his  purpose  completely. 
The  first  two  acts  of  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme'  are 
given  up  to  the  presentation  to  the  public  of  Monsieur 
Jourdain,  and  the  actual  plot  does  not  emerge  into  sight 
until  the  third  act;  but  this  is  of  small  consequence,  since 
the  story  imports  little  or  nothing  and  the  central  char- 
acter everything.  Moliere  never  scorns  the  niceties  of 
preparation,  when  preparation  is  necessary  to  his  major 
purpose.  The  opening  dialogue  of  the  two  sisters  in 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  353 

the  'Femmes  Savantes*  takes  us  into  the  center  o£.  the 
action  and  arouses  in  us  the  liveliest  interest  to  see  the 
solution  of  the  dilemma.  Tartuffe  is  prepared  for  and 
made  transparent  long  before  we  are  allowed  to  see  him 
in  the  flesh.  Agnes  is  permitted  to  reveal  herself  com- 
pletely the  moment  she  appears.  In  all  this  there  is  noth- 
ing haphazard,  nothing  left  to  chance;  and  Moliere  never 
neglects  any  detail  of  construction  which  seems  to  him 
of  "the  essence  of  the  contract."  It  is  in  these  touches 
that  he  displays  his  mastery  of  the  craft  of  play  making. 
^Sainte-Beuve  insisted  that  Moliere  is  not  merely  a  por- 
trait-painter, but  a  delineator  of  society  as  a  whole.  He 
is  not  a  miniaturist  but  a  fresco-painter,  working  boldly, 
with  swift  certainty  of  stroke.  With  unfailing  fidelity  he 
depicts  the  social  organization  of  his  own  time — which 
is  precisely  the  one  thing  that  Shakspere  never  at- 
tempts, except  casually  in  the  'Merry  Wives.'  His  por- 
trayal revives  that  brilliant  society  before  our  eyes  and 
sets  it  again  in  front  of  us  as  it  was  when  it  uncon- 
sciously posed  to  the  artist.  Beneath  the  contemporary 
we  cannot  fail  to  find  the  permanent,  for  he  gives  us 
the  lasting  truth  about  human  nature  as  well  as  the 
accidental  facts  about  his  own  time.  Grandet  is  more 
elaborately  drawn  than  Harpagon,  but  he  is  not  more 
veracious,  more  vital,  more  alive.  The  'Femmes  Sa- 
vantes'  is  at  bottom  as  modern  as  the  'Monde  ou  Ton 
s'ennuie,'  as  well  as  solider  and  sincerer. 

Any  one  of  Moliere's  greater  comedies  is  a  picture  of  so- 
ciety united  by  the  social  bond,  not  rent  asunder  by  overt 
individualism;  and  therefore  it  is  characteristically  French 
in  its  temper.  There  is  sanity  not  less  than  thorough 
workmanship  in  all  these  larger  comedies;  and  there  is 
dignity  of  purpose  also,  not  mere  amusement  only  and 


354  MOLIERE 

unthinking  laughter.  In  the  'Femmes  Savantes,'  for  ex- 
ample, the  foolishness  of  the  learned  ladies  is  shown  to  be 
not  altogether  innocent,  since  it  leads  Armande  to  shun 
the  honorable  office  of  wife,  and  since  it  dries  up  the 
natural  affection  of  Philaminte  for  Henriette.  Moliere 
delights  in  dealing  with  the  affectations  and  with  the  pas- 
sions that  destroy  the  family  and  with  the  vices  which 
corrode  and  disintegrate  society  itself — selfishness  and 
self-seeking  and  hypocrisy.  In  themselves  these  themes 
may  not  be  laughable,  but  Moliere  manages  to  make  us 
laugh,  while  he  is  also  making  us  take  thought  of  our- 
selves. Subjects  which  Balzac  was  to  present  tragically, 
Moliere  contrives  to  keep  within  the  limits  of  comedy, 
thereby  giving  to  comedy  a  wealth  of  meaning  it  had 
never  before  conveyed. 

In  setting  before  us  the  men  and  women  of  his  own 
time,  who  are  human  beings  for  all  time,  Moliere  some—— 
tim£s_sjmplifies  summarilythe  characters  he  is  presenting, 
he  sometimes  exaggerates  their  essential  characteristics^ 
and  he  sometimes  does  "Bolh,  not  shrinking  Trorncarica- 
ture — as  in  the  case  of  Belise,  in  the  'Femmes  Savantes/ 
He  is  willing  enough  to  sharpen  his  outline  and  to  heighten 
his  color  when  this  seems  to  him  needful;  but  this  neces- 
sity is  not  frequent;  and  in  most  of  the  larger  comedies 
the  characters  are  presented  without  any  forcing  of  the 
note,  with  only  the  condensation  and  the  swift  intensity 
demanded  in  the  theater  where  every  minute  is  counted^/ 

Moliere's  characters  are  not  only  veracious,  they  are  also 
astonishingly  varied;  and  his  range  of  observation  is  most 
remarkable.  In  one  play  or  another  he  puts  on  the  stage 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  He  is  the  only  French 
V  author  of  his  time  who  gives  any  thought  to  the  peasants; 
he  does  not  often  introduce  them,  but  when  he  does,  as  in 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  355 

'Don  Juan/  it  is  with  sympathetic  understanding.  He  is 
familiar,  also,  with  the  male  and  female  riff-raff  of  the 
nether  world  of  dark  intrigue;  and  he  draws  out  of  this  the 
sinister  figure  of  Frosine  in  the  'Avare.'  If  the  Dorante 
of  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme'  has  not  yet  fallen  to  this 
lower  level,  he  is  plainly  on  the  downward  path,  in  spite  of 
his  birth  and  his  breeding  and  his  social  pretensions. 

Probably  it  never  entered  Moliere's  head  to  question 
the  autocracy  of  the  king,  which  was  the  only  rule  he 
knew;  and  probably,  again,  he  would  have  agreed  with 
Ben  Jonson  in  regarding  the  court  as  the  "  special  fountain 
of  manners. "  Certainly  he  was  well  affected  toward  the 
court;  he  set  the  courtiers  frequently  on  the  stage;  and 
almost  the  monarch  himself  in  'Tartuffe.'  The  chief 
figures  in  the  'Misanthrope'  all  belong  to  the  group  that 
immediately  surrounded  the  throne.  Moliere  takes  occa- 
sion to  praise  the  good  judgment  of  the  courtiers  and  the 
open-minded  and  unpedantic  criticism  of  the  men  of  the 
world  who  gathered  about  the  person  of  the  monarch. 
But  he  is  not  dazzled  by  the  glamour  ot  the  royal  circle; 
and  he  is  no  flatterer.  He  holds  the  foolish  marquis  up 
to  ridicule  again  and  again;  he  exhibits  Dorante  as  an 
unscrupulous  adventurer,  if  not  yet  a  frank  swindler; 
and  he  paints  Don  Juan  as  the  boldest  of  villSms.  Even 
the  petty  nobles  of  the  provinces  do  not  escape  his  keen 
observation;  and  the  two  Sottenvilles,  fitly  mated,  are 
immortalized  in  all  their  superb  self-satisfaction. 

Of  course,  it  is  the  burgher  class  that  he  draws  most 
frequently,  with  the  utmost  intimacy  of  knowledge.  He 
brings  before  us  tradesmen  and  citizens  of  high  and  low 
degree,  Orgon  and  Harpagon,  Jourdain  and  Chrysale, 
with  their  wives,  with  their  sons  and  their  daughters,  and 
especially  with  their  servants,  male  and  female.  When  he 


356  MOLIERE 

takes  us  into  the  interior  of  a  French  family  of  the  middle 
class  under  Louis  XIV,  nothing  is  more  characteristic 
and  nothing  displays  better  his  unfailing  felicity  of  obser- 
vation than  the  place  in  these  households  which  is  taken 
by  the  maidservants.  Sometimes  the  menservants  are 
authentic  peasants,  as  in  the  'Ecole  des  Femmes*  and 
'George  Dandin',  but  more  often  not;  the  valets  are  a 
little  fantastic,  at  least  there  is  no  denying  that  Mascarille 
and  Scapin  are  impossible  domestics  in  any  realistic  rep- 
resentation of  family  life,  and  this  is  the  reason  we  fail  to 
find  them  in  the  more  spacious  comedies.  They  are  sur- 
vivals of  the  cunning  slaves  of  Latin  comedy,  or  taken 
over  from  the  tradition  of  the  contemporary  comedy-of- 
masks. 

The  maidservants,  however,  are  drawn  from  real  life, 
caught  in  the  act.  They  appear  at  first  sight  to  be 
variants  of  a  simple  type,  but  they  are  often  clearly  indi- 
vidualized. Martine  is  a  peasant  girl,  and  Nicole  prob- 
ably comes  from  the  country,  whereas  Toinette  and 
Dorine  seem  to  be  city-bred.  They  all  talk  and  they  all 
feel  as  if  they  belonged  to  the  family — indeed,  almost  as 
if  the  family  belonged  to  them.  They  are  the  confidants 
and  the  abettors  of  the  daughters'  love  affairs.  On 
occasion  they  voice  the  sturdy  common  sense  of  the  author 
himself.  They  have  a  hearty  humor  and  a  free  tongue, 
quite  impossible  of  toleration  to-day,  when  servants  come 
and  go,  and  when  they  are  trained  to  know  their  place  and 
not  to  step  outside  of  it.  They  recall  the  "  mammy "  of 
the  old  South,  who  mothered  the  whole  brood  of  her  mis- 
tress, who  was  well  aware  of  her  rights  as  a  member  of 
the  family,  and  who  did  not  hesitate  to  assert  them. 
Dorine,  for  one,  although  she  is  ready  to  dodge  Orgon's 
box  on  the  ear,  feels  herself  a  privileged  character,  say- 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  357 

ing  her  say  boldly,  and  contradicting  her  master,  secure 
in  the  knowledge  that  she  is  a  fixture  in  the  family.  Of 
a  certainty  she  had  rooted  herself  in  the  household  when 
Orgon's  first  wife  was  yet  alive,  and  after  the  mother's 
death  she  it  was  who  brought  up  Valere  and  Mariane. 


VI 

A  literary  masterpiece  often  derives  much  of  its  great- 
ness from  the  fact  that  we  can  find  in  it  much  more  than 
the  author  deliberately  put  there.  We  read  into  it  a  pro- 
founder  meaning  than  he  intended;  and  this  is  no  betrayal, 
since  he  is  one  of  the  supreme  masters  of  his  art,  only  be- 
cause he  was  able  to  build  "better  than  he  knew."  The 
little  sapling  that  the  author  planted  and  tended  during  his 
own  brief  life  strikes  down  deep  roots  after  his  death  and 
grows  into  a  branching  tree,  whose  lofty  stature  he  never 
foresaw.  We  now  discover  in  Moliere,  as  in  Shakspere, 
much  that  would  greatly  surprise  them.  They  wrote  for 
the  stage  of  their  own  day,  for  their  immediate  contem- 
poraries, giving  no  thought  to  the  generations  that  were  to 
come  after.  Yet  posterity  is  glad  to  analyze  in  the  study 
to-day  what  they  meant  only  for  the  stage  of  long  ago. 
They  pleased-  the  crowd  of  their  own  times  and  they  still 
delight  the  scholars,  the  men  of  affairs  and  the  plain 
people  also,  both  in  the  theater  and  in  the  library. 

Moliere  is  like  Shakspere,  once  more,  in  that  his  plays 
have  never  lost  their  popularity  in  the  playhouse  except 
for  a  brief  season  now  and  again.  Critical  theories  may 
come  and  go,  but  Moliere's  comedies  keep  their  firm  hold 
on  the  playgoing  public.  They  have  been  continuously 
acted  by  the  Cpmedie-Francaise,  the  company  of  comedi- 
ans which  can  pride  itself  on  its  direct  descent  from  the 


358  MOLIERE 

little  group  of  actors  whom  Moliere  brought  back  to  the 
capital  two  and  a  half  centuries  ago,  and  which  still 
cherishes  loyally  the  traditions  inherited  from  its  founder. 
Not  only  in  this  unparalleled  national  theater  have  Mo- 
liere's  plays  continued  to  attract  unfailing  audiences,  but 
also  in  playhouses  of  less  pretensions.  They  have  retained 
their  power  to  please  the  unlettered  public  in  Paris  and 
in  the  provinces,  even  when  inadequately  performed  by 
strolling  actors  of  inferior  training.  They  are  still,  as  they 
have  always  been,  the  plays  in  which  the  ambitious  young 
comedian  strives  to  prove  himself.  Their  appeal  has  been 
potent  with  the  plain  people  who  go  to  the  theater  unthink- 
ingly for  the  special  pleasure  to  be  had  there,  and  there 
only;  and  it  has  been  as  indisputable  upon  the  keenest 
judges  of  literature  and  life. 

One  of  the  truests  tests  of  a  great  writer  is  to  call  the 
roll  of  his  admirers  and  of  his  disparagers,  of  his  friends 
and  of  his  foes.  And  this  trial  Moliere  withstands  tri- 
umphantly now  and  always.  In  his  own  day  he  was  best 
appreciated  by  Boileau  aftid  by  La  Fontaine;  and  in  every 
generation  since  then  he  has  been  beloved  by  those  whose 
affection  was  best  worth  having — by  Goethe  and  by 
Fielding,  by  Scott  and  by  Sainte-Beuve.  Goethe,  for 
example,  declared,  "I  have  known  and  loved  Moliere 
from  my  youth,  and  I  have  learned  from  him  during  my 
whole  life."  And  Sainte-Beuve  asserted  that  to  love 
Moliere,  "to  love  him  sincerely,  is  to  have  a  guarantee 
against  many  a  defect  and  many  a  fault;  it  is  to  be  anti- 
pathetic to  all  pedantry,  all  artificiality  of  style,  all  affec- 
tation of  language;  it  is  to  love  common  sense  in  others 
as  well  as  in  yourself;  it  is  to  be  assured  against  the  dan- 
gers either  of  overestimating  our  common  humanity,  or 
of  underestimating  it;  it  is  to  be  cured  forever  of  fanati- 


MOLIERE  THE  DRAMATIST  359 

cism  and  intolerance."  Moliere's  enemies  are  as  honor- 
able to  him  as  his  admirers;  they  are  the  fanatics  and  the 
pedants — Rousseau,  for  one,  and  Schlegel  for  another. 
Goethe  was  characteristically  shrewd  when  he  asserted 
that  Schlegel  felt  that  if  he  had  been  a  contemporary 
of  Moliere,  he  might  have  been  pilloried  by  the  side  of 
Trissotin. 

While  the  acutest  and  ripest  critics  of  every  tongue 
have  been  abundant  in  praise,  the  dramatists  of  all  coun- 
tries have  paid  the  sincere  flattery  of  imitation.  In 
France,  Regnard  and  Marivaux  and  Beaumarchais  all 
derive  from  Moliere;  they  all  find  inspiration  in  the  study 
of  his  comedies;  and  in  him  they  are  all  contained  in  germ. 
In  the  nineteenth  century  Augier  and  Labiche  follow  in  his 
footsteps.  In  England  he  was  imitated  while  he  was  yet 
alive  by  Dry  den;  and  in  its  form,  if  not  in  its  spirit,  the 
comedy  of  Wycherley  and  of  Congreve  is  taken  from  the 
comedy  of  Moliere.  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan  are  his 
pupils,  perhaps  more  or  less  unconscious  of  the  fact. 
He  was  the  model  for  Holberg  in  the  North  and  for 
Goldoni  in  the  South;  and  Lessing,  even  if  a  little  un- 
sympathetic, profited  by  his  example.  And  almost  every 
modern  dramatist,  whether  he  knows  it  or  not,  has  to  ex- 
press himself  in  the  mold  that  was  first  used  by  Moliere, 
who  is  really  the  earliest  of  dramatists  to  work  in  com- 
plete accord  with  the  conditions  of  the  modern  theater. 

Nor  is  his  influence  confined  to  the  drama  alone.  The 
felicitous  character-drawing  of  Steele  and  Addison  in 
the  social  essay  was  due,  in  some  measure,  to  their  ad- 
miration for  Moliere.  Brunetiere  pointed  out  the  impress 
of  Moliere  on  Le  Sage,  and  Le  Breton  has  observed 
it  on  Balzac.  Fielding  began  his  literary  career  by  adap- 
tations from  Moliere,  whose  influence  can  be  discovered 


360  MOLIERE 

easily  in  the  novels  of  his  maturity.  It  is  thus  that  the 
great  French  comic  dramatist's  methods  of  conceiving 
and  presenting  character  and  of  handling  humorous  situ- 
ation have  been  transported  from  the  play  to  prose- 
fiction.  This  stimulation  is  as  obvious  in  the  novel  of  the 
English  language  as  in  that  of  the  French.  From  Le 
Sage  it  passes  to  Smollett  and  to  Dickens;  from  Fielding 
and  Balzac  it  is  transmitted  to  Thackeray  and  Meredith; 
and  from  Scott,  who  received  a  double  current,  one  direct 
and  the  other  indirect  from  'Gil  Bias,'  it  has  been  spread 
abroad  to  all  the  writers  of  romanticist  fiction  who  walk 
in  the  trail  blazed  by  the  author  of  the  Waverley  Novels. 

It  was  only  in  the  early  nineteenth  century  that  the 
novel  really  proved  itself  a  formidable  competitor  of  the 
play;  and  it  was  only  in  the  mid-years  of  that  century  that 
prose-fiction  seemed  about  to  overwhelm  the  drama  and 
to  usurp  its  place.  A  part  of  the  power  of  the  novel  is  the 
direct  result  of  its  adoption  of  the  methods  of  the  drama- 
tists, and  more  especially  of  Moliere.  Now,  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  twentieth  century,  while  the  novel  is  slack- 
ening a  little,  the  play  is  awakening  for  a  renewed  rivalry 
with  prose-fiction.  The  modern  drama  must  also  avail 
itself  of  Moliere's  methods,  as  it  has,  perforce,  to  accept 
the  external  form  he  established.  To-day  poetry  is  lan- 
guishing, while  the  novel  is  flourishing  and  while  the 
drama  is  taking  on  new  life.  In  both  of  the  most  pros- 
perous departments  of  modern  literature  we  can  see  the 
mark  of  Moliere. 


CHAPTER  XXI 
MOLIERE  AND  SHAKSPERE 

I 

"Or  Menander  I  know  only  the  few  fragments,"  so 
Goethe  declared,  "  but  these  gave  me  so  high  an  idea  of 
him  that  I  look  upon  this  great  Greek  as  the  only  man 
who  could  be  compared  with  Moliere."  When  he  said 
this,  the  great  poet,  who  was  also  a  great  critic,  had  only 
comedy  in  his  mind,  which  led  him  to  pass  over  Shak- 
spere,  who  put  forth  his  topmost  power  only  in  tragedy. 
The  comparison  of  Shakspere  and  Moliere,  which  the  Ger- 
man did  not  care  to  draw,  imposes  itself  upon  us  who 
speak  English  and  who  have  been  taught  to  hold  Shak- 
spere as  the  standard  by  which  the  foremost  writers  of 
every  other  language  must  be  measured.  The  English 
dramatist  wrote  in  an  era  of  expansion  and  of  imaginative 
energy,  and  the  French  dramatist  worked  in  a  period  of 
keen  intelligence  and  of  social  reserve.  The  Englishman 
is  the  master  of  tragedy,  who  has  also  left  us  a  group  of 
delightful  comedies;  and  the  Frenchman  is  the  master 
of  comedy,  who  might  have  attained  to  the  tragic,  if  only 
his  life  had  been  a  little  longer. 

It   is   interesting   to  remember  that  ^ophocLgs,   Shakr 
and  Moliere,  the  supreme  dramatists,  held  each  of 

ViMM^HmgpBMHiVIKSSSPBWV^10*""^1111^11^1*  ^^IMMq^MaMaanMfeHHM^MMMMMHBHMHMMVMMI 

them  a  middle  place  in  the  successive  stages  of  the  most 
splendid  expansion  of  the  drama  in  their  several  tongues. 

361 


362  MOLIERE 

Each  of  these  noble  eras  was  compassed  in  a  century,  a 
little  more  or  a  little  less.  .ZEschylus  was  born  525  B.C. 
and  Euripides  died  in  406;  and  Sophocles  holds  the  po- 
sition midway.  Marlowe  was  born  in  1565  and  Shirley 
died  in  1666;  and  Shakspere  flourishes  a  little  before  the 
middle  of  these  hundred  years.  Corneille  was  born  in 
1606  and  Racine  died  in  1699;  and  Moliere  runs  his 
briefer  career  between  them.  And  it  may  be  noted  also 
in  Spain  there  elapsed  only  a  little  more  than  a  century 
from  the  birth  of  Lope  de  Vega,  in  1562,  to  the  death  of 
Calderon  in  1681 — the  Spanish  period  of  dramatic  activity 
beginning  earlier  than  the  English  and  lasting  later  than 
the  French.  Perhaps  it  was  well  for  Sophocles,  for  Shak- 
spere and  for  Moliere  that  they  came  forward  at  the  ma- 
turity of  the  movement  in  which  they  were  chiefs,  neither 
pioneers  in  its  beginning  nor  laggards  at  the  end,  when  at 
last  the  original  impulse  was  slackening. 

Moliere  was  only  fifty-one  when  he  died,  the  same  age 
attained  by  Lessing  and  by  Balzac;  Shakspere  survived 
to  be  fifty-two  and  so  did  Menander;  this  comparatively 
premature  death  has  an  importance  of  its  own,  for  even 
if  they  may  have  done  their  work  thus  early  and  have  put 
forth  all  their  powers  before  they  died,  they  were  deprived 
of  that  aftermath  of  fame  which  came  to  Voltaire  and 
Goethe  and  Victor  Hugo,  by  the  mere  fact  of  survival 
beyond  the  allotted  threescore  years  and  ten. 

In  the  merely  external  circumstances  of  their  careers, 
Shakspere  and  Moliere  are  often  curiously  alike.  They 
were  both  born  in  prosperous  households  of  the  middle 
class;  and  they  were  not  stinted  in  their  youth,  although 
the  affairs  of  both  fathers  may  have  become  embarrassed 
later.  Shakspere  may  have  gone  to  the  grammar  school 
at  Stratford;  and  Moliere  went  to  the  best  school  in 


MOLIERE  AND  SHAKSPERE  363 

Paris,  getting  a  more  thorough  training.  Neither  of 
them  ever  achieved  the  wide  erudition  of  Lessing,  still 
less  the  minute  scholarship  of  Racine.  Both  broke  away 
from  their  homes  to  become  actors;  and  both,  after  acting 
for  a  while,  undertook  to  write  plays.  Both  began  mod- 
estly as  dramatists,  content  at  first  to  imitate  and  to  patch 
up  earlier  work.  Even  when  they  had  given  over  this 
'prentice  labor,  their  earlier  pieces  contained  little  prom- 
ise of  their  later  mastery.  In  'Love's  Labor's  Lost'  and 
in  the  'Etourdi'  we  can  see  clever  young  writers  striving  to 
show  off  their  cleverness,  delighting  in  their  own  fantasies 
and  not  yet  knowing  enough  about  life  itself  to  be  willing 
to  rely  on  it  unaided.  Moliere  was  the  manager  of  his 
company,  while  Shakspere  was  only  one  of  several  part- 
ners in  his;  and  both  of  them  had  a  shrewd  sagacity 
in  business  affairs,  governing  their  private  fortunes  with 
skill,  putting  money  out  at  interest  and  amassing  a  com- 
fortable reserve.  Both  of  them  liked  the  good  things 
of  life;  and  neither  of  them  took  an  austere  view  of  man- 
kind. Shakspere  was  as  little  attracted  toward  the  Puri- 
tan as  Moliere  was  toward  the  Jansenist. 

Both  of  them  are  ready  enough  to  repeat  an  effect 
which  has  been  found  attractive;  so  the  lovers'  quarrel 
of  the  'Depit  Amoureux'  is  varied  only  a  little  in  "Tar- 
tuffe'  and  in  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme';  and  the  hero- 
ines of  the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,'  'As  You  Like  It,' 
and  'Twelfth  Night,'  one  after  another  don  boy's  apparel. 
Both  of  them  make  unhesitating  use  of  the  works  of  their 
predecessors  and  contemporaries,  despoiling  alike  the 
alien  and  the  native,  taking  their  raw  material  wherever 
they  found  it,  as  if  they  disdained  the  trouble  of  mere 
invention,  choosing  to  put  forth  their  full  imagination 
rather  in  the  interpretation  of  the  stories  which  others 


364  MOLIERE 

less  gifted  had  failed  to  use  to  full  advantage.  Both  of 
them,  despite  this  casual  borrowing  of  situation,  were 
boldly  original  in  their  creation  of  character.  Shak- 
spere  finds  his  supreme  triumph  in  the  display  of  char- 
acter as  it  expands  under  opportunity  or  disintegrates 
under  temptation,  whereas  Moliere,  presenting  it  as  per- 
manent, reveals  it  to  us  in  all  its  aspects.  Both  of  them 
were  copious  in  their  productivity  and  swift  in  execution. 
Ben  Jonson  records  that  Shakspere  "never  blotted  a  line"; 
and  Boileau  tried  in  vain  to  get  Moliere  to  correct.  Both 
of  them  were  helpful  to  younger  authors,  Shakspere  to 
Jonson  and  Moliere  to  Racine.  Both  of  them  in  their 
later  years  on  occasion  collaborated  with  fellow  drama- 
tists, Shakspere  with  Fletcher  and  Moliere  with  Corneille. 
Both  of  them  cared  little  for  the  publication  of  their 
pieces;  and  it  was  only  several  years  after  the  death  of 
either  that  his  complete  plays  were  published  by  the 
pious  care  of  surviving  comrades  in  the  theater.  The 
manuscripts  of  both  have  vanished;  and  we  have  from 
their  pens  only  a  few  signatures  to  legal  documents. 
Both  of  them  had  the  gift  of  friendship  and  were  highly 
esteemed  by  their  associates,  even  if  neither  of  them  was 
really  appreciated  by  his  contemporaries.  Both  of  them 
took  life  soberly,  never  surprised  that  it  was  not  better. 
Neither  of  them  much  exceeded  a  half-century  of  life. 
Shakspere,  who  lived  a  few  months  longer,  had  done  his 
work  and  had  withdrawn  to  rest,  while  Moliere  was  still 
in  harness,  with  his  goal  not  yet  attained.  Neither  of 
them  seems  to  have  sought  glory  for  its  own  sake,  satis- 
fied with  immediate  success  and  caring  little  for  mere 
fame. 

Many  of  these  resemblances  in  the  career  of  the  two 
great  dramatists  may  be  merely  fortuitous;    but  some  of 


MOLIERE  AND  SHAKSPERE  365 

them  are  strangely  significant.  And  it  would  not  be  dif- 
ficult to  pick  out  other  points  of  similarity  or  of  contrast 
in  their  works.  The  'Comedy  of  Errors'  is  not  unlike 
the  'Amphitryon'  in  one  of  its  devices  (derived  in  both 
cases  from  Plautus);  and  'Richard  III'  is  not  unlike 
'Don  Juan5  in  its  dominating  character.  Ford  is  akin 
to  Arnolphe  in  his  jealousy,  and  Autolycus  is  akin  to 
Mascarille  in  his  resourceful  knavery,  both  rascals  em- 
ploying on  one  occasion  the  very  same  trick  of  not  letting 
a  robbed  man  suspect  his  loss.  Atceste  can  be  compared 
better  with  Jaques  than  with  Timon.  Harpagon  repays 
a  comparative  study  with  Shylock,  and  TartufFe  with 
lago.  Hamlet's  advice  to  the  Players  can  be  set  over 
against  the  personal  discussion  of  actors  and  of  the  art 
of  acting  which  Moliere  put  in  the  'Impromptu  de  Ver- 
sailles.' 

There  can  be  no  dispute  as  to  the  perfect  understanding 
of  the  principles  of  the  histrionic  art  possessed  by  both 
Shakspere  and  Moliere;  and  there  can  also  be  little  doubt 
that  in  the  actual  practice  of  the  art  Moliere  was  superior 
to  SKakspere.  Moliere  was  acknowledged  to  be  the  fore- 
most comedian  of  his  time,  even  by  those  who  thought  ill 
of  his  plays.  Shakspere's  position  as  an  actor  is  more 
modest,  so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  the  fact  that  he  did 
not  venture  to  appear  in  any  of  the  more  important  parts 
in  his  own  plays,  whether  tragic  or  comic.  Hamlet  was 
performed  by  Burbage,  its  creator  apparently  contenting 
himself  with  the  humbler  character  of  the  Ghost,  for 
which  dignity  and  delivery  were  sufficient  equipment; 
and  he  is  believed  also  to  have  impersonated  old  Adam 
in  'As  You  Like  It.'  No  doubt,  Shakspere  had  a  good 
presence,  and  probably  his  elocution  deserved  praise, 
since  this  is  a  quality  within  the  control  of  intelligence. 


366  MOLIERE 

But  the  great  English  dramatist  must  have  been  more  or 
less  deficient  in  the  fundamental  mimetic  faculty,  without 
which  intelligence  alone  is  ineffective.  We  know,  also, 
that  Shakspere  was  not  in  love  with  acting,  as  Moliere 
was;  and  his  distaste  for  the  art  may  be  either  the  cause 
or  the  consequence  of  his  lack  of  prominence  in  his  calling. 

II 

To  push  the  comparison  between  these  two  great  dra- 
matic poets  too  far  would  be  unfair  to  Moliere,  since 
Shakspere  is  the  master  mind  of  all  literature.  He  soared 
to  heights  and  he  explored  depths  and  he  had  a  range  to 
which  Moliere  could  not  pretend.  His  is  the  spirit  of 
soul-searching  tragedy,  of  youthful  and  graceful  romantic- 
comedy,  of  dramatic-romance,  of  dramatized  history;  and 
in  no  one  of  these  is  Moliere  his  rival.  But  in  the  comedy 
of  real  life  he  is  not  Moliere's  rival.  Jn  every  variety  of. 
thecornic  drama  Moliere  is  uneaualed, — -in  farce,  in  the 
comedy-ot-mtngue,  in  tne  corned v-of-characterT  and  in 
the  comedy  which  is  almost  stiffened  into  drama,  yet 
without  ceasing  to  be  comedy.  Shakspere's  greatest 
strength  is  in  tragedy,  after  all,  even  if  he  delights  us 
also  with  comedy.  Moliere  is  at  home  in  comedy  only, 
even  if  he  had  a  latent  tragic  possibility.  "In  depth, 
penetrativeness  and  powerful  criticism  of  life"  Moliere, 
comic  as  he  is  and  not  tragic,  belongs  to  the  same  family 
as  Shakspere  and  Sophocles,  so  Matthew  Arnold  main- 
tained, pointing  out  that  he  had  also  '^9Jag^g£f2.t_advan- 
\age  over  Shakspere"  in  that  "he  wr ojte_jjor^ jajjipi; £ _de>_ 
veloped  theater,  a  more  developed  society." 

Arnold  also  suggested  that  Moliere  was  "probably  by 
nature  a  better  theater  poet  than  Shakspere;   he  had  a 


MOLIERE  AND  SHAKSPERE  367 

keener  sense  for  theatrical  situation."  This  is  a  hard 
saying,  for  it  is  difficult  to  admit  that  Shakspere  was  not 
a  born  playwright  who  acquired  an  early  mastery  of  his 
craft.  But  the  English  dramatist  was  less  ambitious 
than  the  French,  less  conscientious  and  less  careful.  Ad- 
mirable as  his  workmanship  is  in  his  nobler  tragedies,  it 
can  be  very  slovenly,  especially  in  his  dramatic-romances, 
'Cymbeline'  and  the  'Winter's  Tale.'  In  his  romantic- 
comedies  he  sometimes  tumbles  together  two  or  three  in- 
dependent stories,  leaving  us  to  discover  as  best  we  can 
which  one  of  them  it  is  he  intends  us  to  center  our  inter- 
est on.  Moliere  has  only  a  single  plot,  orderly  and  lucid; 
and  this  is  partly  because  he  sees  life  clearly  and  uncom- 
plicated. Coquelin  asserted  that  Moliere  has  more  art 
and  more  method  than  Shakspere;  "he  graduates  his 
effects  better." 

The  real  distinction  between  Moliere  and  Shakspere 
merely  as  playwrights  is  that  Moliere  is  an  artist  always, 
and  that  Shakspere  is  an  artist  only  intermittently  and 
when  the  spirit  moves  him.  Moliere  always  does  his 
best;  even  a  play  of  an  inferior  type  he  makes  as  good 
as  he  can,  as  good  as  a  play  of  that  type  can  be.  Shak- 
spere is  an  artist  putting  forth  his  full  power  only  when 
he  happens  to  be  keenly  interested  in  his  subject,  in 
'Othello/  for  example,  and  in  'Macbeth.'  In  plotting 
these  plays  he  spares  himself  no  pains.  But  if  we  ex- 
amine his  work  as  a  whole  we  can  see  that  he  does  not 
always  exert  his  constructive  skill.  Sometimes  he  is  care- 
less of  form,  huddling  his  action  together  anyhow,  satis- 
fied with  the  easiest  way  of  handling  his  story,  and 
relying  chiefly  on  his  insight  into  character  and  on  his 
unquenchable  springs  of  poetry.  Wisdom  is  his  for  the 
asking,  and  almost  without  taking  thought;  but  solid 


368  MOLIERE 

construction  taxes  the  mind,  and  Shakspere  occasionally 
neglects  the  preliminary  scaffolding  which  a  vital  action 
always  demands  and  which  Moliere  and  Sophocles  never 
fail  to  provide. 

The  explanation  for  this  is  not  far  to  seek.  The 
English  dramatist  was  working  for  a  less  developed 
theater  than  the  French  and  for  a  less  developed  society. 
There  was  no  standard  of  artistic  perfection  imposed  on 
Shakspere  by  the  pressure  of  an  educated  public  opinion. 
There  was  nothing  to  keep  him  up  to  the  mark,  except 
his  own  ambition;  and  this  was  uncertain  and  even 
flagging.  He  seems  sometimes  to  have  felt  that  what 
was  good  enough  for  his  uncritical  audience,  for  the  un- 
lettered groundlings,  was  good  enough  for  him.  This 
is  why  he  rarely  rises  superior  to  the  traditions  of  the 
rude  and  semi-medieval  theater  for  which  he  worked, 
content  to  avail  himself  of  its  conventions  and  to  take  the 
short  cuts  it  authorized.  This  is  why  lago  is  less  subtly 
presented  than  Tartuffe;  lago  is  frankly  a  villain,  and 
he  knows  himself  for  what  he  is,  unbosoming  himself 
freely  and  frequently  to  the  spectators,  whereas  Tartuffe 
never  drops  the  mask  until  he  stands  at  bay,  and  may 
very  possibly  have  had  no  suspicion  of  his  own  vileness. 

Not  a  few  of  those  who  have  most  highly  appreciated 
Shakspere  have  felt  this  occasional  carelessness,  although 
most  of  them  have  failed  to  express  it.  Coleridge  linked 
the  two  masters  together,  and  told  us  that  "  in  the  comedy 
of  Shakspere  and  Moliere  the  more  accurate  my  knowl- 
edge and  the  more  profoundly  I  think,  the  greater  is  the 
satisfaction  that  mingles  with  my  laughter."  And  George 
Meredith,  in  his  discussion  of  the  comic  spirit  and  of  the 
idea  of  comedy,  recurred  again  and  again  to  Moliere, 
holding  him  up  to  our  admiration  as  the  unsurpassable 


MOLIERE  AND  SHAKSPERE  369 

model,  and  declaring  that  "if  life  is  likened  to  the  com- 
edy of  Moliere,  there  is  no  scandal  in  the  comparison." 
And  this  is  what  no  one  could  rightly  say  of  the  comedy 
of  Shakspere,  who  put  his  richest  comic  character  into 
a  straggling  chronicle-play  and  whose  romantic-comedies 
are  compounded  of  arbitrary  fantasy;  delightful  as  they 
are,  they  bear  little  relation  to  real  life  as  this  ever  existed 
anywhere  but  in  a  fancied  Illyria  or  in  the  distant  Bo- 
hemia which  is  a  desert  country  by  the  sea. 


in 

Not  only  does  Shakspere  refrain  from  dealing  with  the 
men  and  women  of  his  own  time  in  his  own  country,  not 
only  are  his  most  comic  characters  sporadic  and  incidental 
to  a  tale  of  pure  romance,  of  young  lovers  meeting  and 
mating  in  the  springtime  of  their  lives,  he  is  also  willing 
often  to  gratify  the  Elizabethan  liking  for  an  empty 
and  glittering  playing  with  words,  for  a  wit  which  is 
merely  external  and  almost  detachable,  and  which,  unre- 
lated to  character,  tends  in  no  wise  to  elucidate  it.  His 
humor  is  frequently  verbal,  which  Moliere's  never  is. 
"Moliere  was  no  mere  wit,"  so  Coquelin  reminded  us. 
"  Puns,  points,  collocations  of  droll  sounds, — these  are  all 
absent  from  his  work.  .  .  .  He  wished  to  bring  a  laugh 
only  by  touches  of  nature.  It  is  not  from  him  as  an  au- 
thor that  his  witticisms  come;  it  is  from  his  characters, 
and  they  come  naturally  and  by  the  force  of  things." 
Of  course,  this  is  true  very  frequently  of  Shakspere  also, 
especially  of  his  FalstafF;  but  often  it  is  not  true,  and  his 
characters  descend  to  the  bandying  of  repartee  and  to  the 
making  of  quips  which  do  not  serve  to  reveal  character 
or  to  advance  the  story.  Moliere  indeed  declares  his 


370  MOLIERE 

own  principle  in  the  'Critique  de  1'Ecole  des  Femmes,' 
when  he  asserts  that  a  certain  joke  had  not  been  put  in  by 
the  author  "  as  a  clever  saying  of  his  own,  but  only  as  a 
thing  that  characterized  the  man." 

Perhaps  the  explanation  for  this  willingness  of  Shak- 
spere  to  give  his  audience  the  verbal  witticisms  they  rel- 
ished may  be  sought  in  the  fact  that  his  romantic-come- 
dies are  more  romantic  than  they  are  comic,  whereas 
Moliere's  comedies  are  essentially  realistic.  Touchstone 
and  even  Jaques  are  only  incidental  and  accessory;  and 
the  core  of  Shakspere's  comedy  is  the  coming  together  of 
Rosalind  and  Orlando.  Generally  Moliere  puts  in  a  pair 
of  young  lovers  merely  to  hold  his  plot  together,  to  make 
a  story  around  Orgon  and  Argan  and  Harpagon.  But 
Shakspere  sets  his  pair  of  young  lovers  in  the  forefront; 
they  are  his  comedy  and  all  else  imports  little.  In  other 
words,  Shakspere's  comic  characters  interest  us  by  what 
they  are,  whereas  Moliere's  often  take  our  attention  more 
by  what  they  do.  Comic  action  is  the  life  of  many  a  play 
of  Moliere's,  although  not  of  the  greatest;  and  as  a  result 
character  is  more  simply  presented  in  Moliere's  pieces 
than  in  Shakspere's;  it  is  less  complex.  So  it  is  that 
Shakspere's  clowns  and  other  of  his  humorous  figures 
wear  their  motley  outside,  while  Moliere's  characters 
wear  it  within. 

The  secret  of  the  acceptable  mingling  of  romance  and 
of  comedy  is  Shakspere's  only;  and  what  he  did  in  the 
vein  of  romantic-comedy  he  alone  could  do.  The  form 
itself  may  be  anomalous  and  open  to  adverse  analysis; 
but  the  result  is  charming — when  it  is  Shakspere  who 
stirs  the  mixture  with  the  magic  of  his  lyric  gift.  But  of 
the  few  who  have  sought  to  follow  in  the  path  he  trod 
through  the  fairy  woodland,  none  have  grasped  the  elusive 


MOLIERE  AND  SHAKSPERE  371 

prize.  In  other  words,  Shakspere's  comedies  are  highly 
individual;  they  are  his  and  his  alone.  They  are  not 
deliberate  expositions  of  the  manners  and  customs  of  his 
own  time  and  of  his  own  people.  T^j^jrejiotjacial,  as 
Moliere's  comedies  are.  They  are  too  idealistic,  too  re- 
mote from  everyday  life,  from  the  rude  experience  of  act- 
uality, to  be  all  that  comedy  can  be.  They  belong  to 
a  very  special  type,  too  lyric,  perhaps  even  too  poetic, 
to  be  acceptable  as  a  picture  of  the  real  world  about  us; 
and  it  is  just  such  a  picture  that  we  have  a  right  to  ex- 
pect in  comedy.  The  romantic  drama  may  voice  our 
aspirations  and  show  us  what  we  dream  that  we  would 
like  to  be,  and  tragedy  may  set  before  us  the  things  we 
dread;  but  comedy  has  for  its  chief  duty  to  depict  us 
as  we  are  actually.  When  it  most  completely  fulfils  its 
function  comedy  is  not  individual,  like  Shakspere's,  but 
social,  like  Moliere's. 

Undeniable  as  is  Shakspere's  comic  force,  indisputable 
as  is  his  power  of  creating  humorous  character  and  of 
handling  amusing  situation,  it  is  not  in  comedy  that 
he  most  satisfactorily  exhibits  his  consummate  genius 
as  a  dramatic  poet.  For  the  full  display  of  his  art  he 
needs  the  towering  framework  of  tragedy;  and  it  is  in 
comedy  that  he  is  less  of  a  theater  poet  than  Moliere. 
It  is  by  his  tragedy  far  more  than  by  his  comedy  that 
Shakspere  has  conquered  the  nations  of  the  modern  world. 
Hamlet  and  Othello  and  Macbeth  are  known  to  millions 
who  have  never  heard  of  Viola  and  Beatrice  and  Anne 
Page.  This  is  due  partly  to  the  exportability  of  tragedy, 
which  works  with  the  universal  emotions.  A  great  tragedy 
can  go  anywhere,  whereas  a  great  comedy  has  often  to 
tarry  at  home  because  of  its  very  greatness  as  a  comedy, 
because  of  the  adequacy  of  its  reproduction  of  contempo- 


372  MOLIERE 

rary  reality.  'Julius  Caesar'  can  be  taken  to  the  confines 
of  the  globe  and  its  tragic  action  will  arouse  the  interest 
of  the  spectators,  whatever  their  race  or  their  degree  of 
culture;  but  the  'Femmes  Savantes'  can  meet  with  fit 
and  full  appreciation  only  when  it  is  performed  before 
those  who  can  understand  its  strokes  and  who  can  recog- 
nize the  types  it  presents.  The  passions  are  much  the 
same  the  wide  world  over;  but  wit  and  humor  are  often 
local,  and  character  often  depends  on  time  and  place. 

The  predominant  influence  which  Shakspere  has  ex- 
erted upon  modern  tragedy  Moliere  has  exerted  upon 
modern  comedy.  The  only  dramatist  of  the  nineteenth 
century  who  sought  to  recall  again  in  his  own  plays  the 
evanescent  grace  and  fleeting  beauty  of  Shakspere's 
romantic-comedy  is  Alfred  de  Musset.  All  the  other 
writers  of  comedy,  not  only  in  France  but  in  England  and 
in  Germany,  have  found  their  model  in  Moliere.  This 
is  due  partly  to  the  fact  that  the  practical  playwright  of 
to-day,  adjusting  his  plays  to  the  theater  of  our  own  era, 
shrinks  instinctively  from  the  imitation  of  Shakspere, 
whose  comedies  are  semi-medieval  because  they  were 
necessarily  adjusted  to  the  ruder  Elizabethan  platform 
stage,  and  because  they  therefore  need  to  be  taken  apart 
and  put  together  again  before  they  can  be  represented  on 
the  picture-frame  stage  of  our  latter-day  playhouses. 
But  it  is  due,  also,  to  the  fact  that  in  Moliere  the  modern 
dramatist  finds,  first  of  all,  the  outer  form  which  concords 
with  the  conditions  of  the  theater  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, and  then  also  the  final  model  of  the  comedy  which 
represents  largely  and  liberally  the  realities  of  life. 


MOLIERE  AND  SHAKSPERE  373 

IV 

Less  myriad-minded  than  Shakspere,  less  lyric  and  less 
poetic,  lacking  the  depth  and  the  width  of  the  English 
dramatist,  dying  early  before  his  tragic  possibilities  had 
a  chance  to  unfold  themselves,  Moliere  is  more  com- 
pletely the  master  of  comedy.  He  is  a  more  conscious 
and  a  more  conscientious  artist  in  his  structure.  He  has 
more  absolutely  attained  the  ideal  of  that  high  comedy 
which  is  the  picture  of  society  and  the  revelation  of 
humanity  in  its  larger  relations.  Better  than  Shakspere 
does  he  succeed  in  achieving  "the  imitation  of  life,  the 
mirror  of  manners,  the  image  of  truth" — to  borrow  that 
phrase  of  Cicero's,  which  echoes  through  Renascence 
criticism.  That  he,  rather  than  Shakspere,  should  have 
most  richly  expressed  himself  in  comedy,  is  a  strange 
thing,  since  Matthew  Arnold,  taking  the  hint  from  Sainte- 
Beuve,  was  plainly  right  in  saying  that  "Shakspere  has 
more  joy  than  Moliere,  more  assurance  and  more  peace." 
Perhaps  Moliere's  humor  flowers  out  of  his  melancholy, 
and  his  satire  out  of  his  sadness.  Whatever  their  ob- 
scure roots,  the  humor  is  there  in  his  plays,  and  the  satire 
also,  and,  in  addition,  the  sheer  fun  which  brings  irre- 
sistible laughter. 

It  is  our  good  fortune  that  whatever  our  tastes  we  can 
find  somewhere  in  literature  the  poet  or  the  prose  writer 
who  can  satisfy  them;  and  if  our  likings  are  inconstant, 
we  are  still  rewarded  as  we  roam  from  one  author  to 
another.  Certain  poems  there  are,  and  novels  also  and 
dramas,  that  we  outgrow  as  we  wax  in  years  and  in  wis- 
dom. What  pleased  us  once,  may  fail  to  delight  forever. 
There  are  authors  whom  we  used  to  enjoy  and  whom,  in 
turn,  we  drop  behind  us,  milestones  marking  the  road  we 


374  MOLIERE 


have  travelled;  and  though  we  came  up  to  them  with 
pleasure  once  upon  a  time,  the  season  arrives  at  last  when 
we  depart  from  them  without  regret,  to  leave  them  in  the 
distance.  We  may  not  have  tarried  long  with  them; 
and  unless  we  turn  back  we  never  pass  them  again. 

Moliere  is  not  one  of  these  whom  we  desert  as  we  grow 
older  and  more  exacting  in  our  tastes.  He  is  for  all  ages 
of  man.  In  youth  we  may  enjoy  him,  unthinkingly, 
amused  by  his  comic  abundance,  his  rollicking  drollery, 
his  frank  fun.  As  we  mature,  his  spell  over  us  strengthens 
its  hold;  and  we  discover  the  finer  qualities  of  his  work 
—  his  insight  into  human  motives,  and  his  marvelous 
skill  in  revealing  character.  In  old  age  we  regale  our- 
selves once  again  with  his  unfailing  and  unfading  humor, 
and  with  the  true  wisdom  which  underlies  it.  At  one 
time  the  'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme'  may  please  us,  and 
at  another  the  'Misanthrope';  but  at  all  times  a  man 
who  relishes  the  comedy  of  human  endeavor  will  find  in 
Moliere  what  he  needs. 


LA  BONNE  COMEDIE 

Les  'Precieuses  Ridicules'  allerent  aux  nues  des  le  premier  jour. 
Un  vieillard  s'ecria  du  milieu  du  parterre:  "Courage,  Moliere!  voila  de 
la  bonne  comedie!"  (Notice  sur  Moliere.) 

True  Comedy  circum  praecordia  ludit, — 

//  cheers  the  heart's  cockles.     'Twas  thus  that  he  viewed  it,- 

That  simple  old  critic,  who  smote  on  his  knee, 

And  named  it  no  more  than  he  knew  it  to  le. 

"True  Comedy!" — ah!  there  is  this  thing  about  it, 
If  it  makes  the  House  merry,  you  never  need  doubt  it: 
It  lashes  the  vicious,  it  laughs  at  the  fool, 
And  it  brings  all  the  prigs  and  pretenders  to  school. 

To  the  poor  it  is  kind ;   to  the  plain  it  is  gentle; 
It  is  neither  too  tragic  nor  too  sentimental; 
Its  thrust,  like  a  rapier's,  though  cutting,  is  clean, 
And  it  pricks  Affectation  all  over  the  scene. 

Its  rules  are  the  rules  Aristotle  has  taught  us; 

Its  ways  have  not  altered  since  Terence  and  Plautus ; 

Its  mission  is  neither  to  praise  nor  to  blame; 

Its  weapon  is  Ridicule;   Folly,  its  game. 

"True  Comedy!" — such  as  our  Poquelin  made  it! 
"True  Comedy!" — such  as  our  Coquelin  played  it! 
It  clears  out  the  cobwebs,  it  freshens  the  air; 
And  it  treads  in  the  steps  of  its  master,  Moliere! 

AUSTIN  DOBSON. 


375 


INDEX 


ABBE  COTIN,  304. 

Abbe  d'Aubignac,  34,  332. 

Acaste,  208,  209. 

Addison,  359. 

'Adelphi,'  94. 

Adraste,  231,  232. 

^Eschylus,  362. 

Agnes,  116,  118,  297,  353. 

Alarcon,  51. 

Alceste,  161,  204,  205,  207,  208,  209, 
210,  211,  212,  216,  217,  218,  219, 
220,  257,  282,  305,  333,  334,  344, 

365- 

Alcmena,  233,  237. 
Alexander  VII,  166. 
'Alexandre'  by  Racine,  103,  176. 
Alfred  de  Musset,  372. 
'All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,'  241. 
Alps,  186. 
Alsace,  34. 

'Amants  Magnifiques,'  264,  265. 
America,  295. 
'Amour  Medecin,'  190,  192,  197,  199, 

201,  311. 
'Amphitryon,'  231,  235,  236,  237,  238, 

243,  257,  274,  277,  365. 
'Ancien  Regime,'  210. 
Angelica  Kaufmann,  75. 
Angelique,  239,  313,  344. 
Angouleme,  32. 
Anne  Page,  371. 
Anne  of  Austria,  35,  124. 
Anselme,  61,  62,  245,  246,  247. 
'Apology  for  Epicurus,'  13. 
Archbishop  of  Paris,  169. 
Argan,  311,  312,  314,  315,  343,  344, 

370- 
Ariste,  94,  95,  96,  290,  291,  292,  294, 

299,  313- 

Aristophanes,  i,  237,  238,  260,  335. 
Aristophanic  license,  192. 
Aristotelian,  91. 
Aristotle,  9,  131,  132,  197,  246,  292, 

33°- 

Arnold,  Matthew,  366,  373. 
Arnolphe,  115,  116,  118,  119,  120,  121, 

218,  365. 


Arsinoe,  208,  209,  211,  215. 
'Art  of  Poetry,'  by  Horace,  272. 
'Art  of  Poetry,'  by  Boileau,  103. 
'As  You  Like  It,'  214,  363,  365. 
Athens,  46. 

'Attila,'  by  Corneille,  232,  233,  277. 
Aubry,  28. 
Augier,  222,  359. 
'Aulularia,'  244. 
Auteuil,  335. 
Autolycus,  365. 

'Avare,'  the,  243,  244,  248,  249,  250, 
251,  252,  253,  267,  270,  282,  288, 

290,  342,  343,  355. 
Avarice,  250. 

'BALLET  DE  BALLETS,'  283. 

'Ballet  of  the  Muses/  229,  230,  231, 

232. 
Balzac,  51,  69,  71,  164,  330,  334,  359, 

360,  362. 
Baron,  317,  318. 
Bastille,  35. 

Beatrice,  186,  304,  371. 
Beaumarchais,  3,  116,  167,  231,  335, 

359- 

Bejart,  Armande,  107,  108,  in,  112, 
136,   175,  190,   202,  219,  286,  290, 

291,  293,  295,  296,  297,  298,  301, 

345,  354- 

Bejart,  Genevieve,  286. 
Bejart,  Joseph,  44,  107,  343. 
Bejart,  Louis,  46,  83,  286. 
Bejart,  Madeleine,  20,  24,  25,  26,  27 

33,  37,  44,  107,  130,  *55>  285*  286, 

308,  344,  345. 
Bejart,  Marie,  107. 
Bejart  family,  29,  44,  107,  343- 
Beline,  313. 

Belise,  290,  296,  298,  303,  307,  354. 
Ben  Jonson,  12,  106,  176,  210,  243, 

247,  355,  364- 

Ben  Jonson's  '  Case  is  Altered,'  247. 
Benedick,  186,  304. 
Beralde,  313,  314. 
Beranger,  3. 
'Berenice'  of  Racine,  277. 


377 


378 


INDEX 


Bernier,  12,  13,  199. 

Beziers,  34. 

Bible,  319. 

Boccaccio,  48. 

Bohemia,  369. 

Boileau,  3,  5,  19,  37,  94,  102,  103,  104, 
105,  122,  123,  124,  149,  150,  151, 
163,  176,  273,  305,  330,  335,  358, 

364- 

Bologna,  55. 
Bolognese,  55. 
Bordeaux,  32,  35. 
Bossuet,  5,  80,  324. 
Boulevards,  3. 
'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,'   in,   259, 

260,  266,  269,  270,  279,  288,  290, 

309,  310,  313,  314,  343,  352,  355, 

363,  374- 
Bourges,  17. 
Boursault,  131. 

Brunetiere,  169,  330,  345,  359- 
Buckingham,  129,  342. 
Burbage,  343,  365. 
Byron,  188. 

CALDERON,  4,  8,  80,  188,  362. 

Canada,  174. 

Captain  Bobadil,  248. 

Carlyle,  322. 

'Case  is  Altered,'  by  Ben  Jonson,  247. 

Catherine,  345. 

Catherine  de  Brie,  345. 

Cathos,  75,  345. 

Celie,  61,  62,  85. 

Celimene,  207,  215,  216,  217,  219,  220, 

249,  344- 
Celts,  the,  328. 

Cervantes,  4,  213,  289,  330,  335,  350. 
Ce*sar  in  'Mort  de  Pompe'e,'  25. 
Chambord,  260,  266. 
Champs  Elysees,  4. 
Chapelle,  12,  13,  101. 
Chappuzeau,  24,  178. 
Charles  Perrault,  272. 
Charpentier,  309. 
Chaucer,  146,  150. 
Chrysale,  290,  291,  292,  293,  294,  299, 

304,  355- 
Cicero,  9,  373. 

'Cid,'  the,  by  Corneille,  8,  23,  51. 
'Cinna,'  by  Corneille,  20. 
Cinq-Mars,  4,  17,  18,  19. 
'Cinq-Mars,'  by  Alfred  de  Vigny,  19. 
Cleante,  155,  174,  245,  246,  248,  251, 

3i3* 

Cleonte,  268,  269. 
Climene,  126,  208,  209,  an,  215,  232. 


Clitandre,  191,  207,  239,  290,  291,  292, 

293,  294,  297,  299,  301,  304. 
Clovis,  79. 

Colbert,  3,  36,  94,  95,  96,  145,  272. 
Coleridge,  241,  368. 
College  de  Clermont,  8,  9,  10,  12,  13, 

14,  17,  33,  234. 
Columbine,  54. 
"Comedians  of  the  Duke  of  Epernon, 

The,"  32. 
Comedie-Francaise,   24,  65,  68,   159, 

258,  320,  357. 

'Comedy  of  Errors,'  77,  238,  244,  365. 
Commander,  the,  181,  182. 
"Company  of  Monsieur,"  129. 
Compiegne,  23. 
Comte  de  Modene,  26. 
'Comtesse  d'Escarbagnas,'  274,  282, 

283,  284,  285,  289,  309,  345. 
Concorde,  Place  de  la,  4. 
Conde,  33,  35,  92,  104,  105,  106,  166, 

167. 

Congreve,  303,  359. 
'Contes,'  by  La  Fontaine,  237. 
Copernicus,  13. 

Coquelin,  81,  302,  367,  369,  375. 
Corneille,  4,  5,  8,  19,  20,  23,  25,  27, 

31,  40,  42,  44,  47,  49,  51,  53,  64,  67, 

70,  71,  90,  123,  131,  164,  237,  276, 

277,  278,  331,  332,  348,  352,  362, 

364- 
Corneille,  the  younger,  117,  121,  164, 

J79>  3i9- 

Corneille's  'Attila,'  232. 
Cotin,  Abbe",  304,  305,  306. 
Covielle,  268,  269,  279. 
Creon,  94. 

Cresse  (grandfather),  7. 
Cresse",  Marie,  6.  \ 

'Critic'  of  Sheridan,  129. 
'Critique    de   PEcole   des    Femmes,' 

125,  128,  131,  136,  277,  342,  370. 
Croix-Noire,  28. 
Cupid,  275,  277. 
Cuvier,'  48. 
'Cymbeline,'  367. 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  12,  13,  14. 

DAMIS,  154. 
D'Andilly,  164. 
Dante,  330. 
Darmesteter,  164. 
Daudet,  314,  316. 
De  Brie,  44. 
De  Quincey,  259. 

'Depit  Amoureux,'  34,  43,  44,  64,  65, 
67,  75,  80,  88,  345,  363. 


INDEX 


379 


Descartes,  8,  301. 

'Desden  con  el  Desden,'  137. 

'Deux  Sosies,'  233. 

'Devotion  to  the  Cross,'  188. 

Diafoirius,  Monsieur,  312. 

Diafoirius,  Thomas,  312,  313. 

Dickens,  307,  360. 

Diderot,  335. 

Dijon,  34. 

'Discourse  on  Method,'  by  Descartes, 
8. 

'Docteur  Amoureux,'  42,  49. 

Doctor,  the,  55. 

Dogberry,  186. 

'Doll's  House,' 349. 

'Don  Garcie  de  Navarre,'  25,  90,  137, 
138,  206,  213,  219,  242. 

'Don  Juan,'  175,  177,  178,  179,  180, 
181,  182,  183,  184,  185,  186,  187, 
188,  189,  190,  192,  201,  204,  212, 
221,  223,  243,  253,  319,  333,  339, 

344,  347,  355,  3^5- 
Don  Pedro,  231,  232. 
Don  Quixote,  213,  350. 
Dorante,  126,  268,  355. 
Dorine,  154,  155,  268,  285,  314,  343, 

344,  35°- 
Dorinene,  268. 
Dr.  Stockmann,  214. 
Dromio,  238. 
Dryden,  n,  236,  237,  359. 
Du  Croisy,  68,  75,  76,  156,  343,  345. 
Du  Fresne,  44. 
Du  Fresnoy,  273. 

Du  Pare,  'Gros  Rene,'  44,  68,  83,  104. 
Du  Pare,  Mademoiselle,  104. 
Du  Ryer,  27. 
Dufort,  18. 
Duke  of  Anjou,  41. 
Duke  of  Guise,  26. 
Duke  of  Montausier,  72. 
Dumas,  222. 
Dumas  (fils),  157. 

'ECOLE  DES  FEMMES,'  106,  113,  114, 

117,    119,     120,    121,    122,    123,   124, 

125,  136,  170,  223,  277,  340,  349, 

356. 
'Ecole  des  Maris,'  93,  94,  95,  96,  106, 

114,  115,  117,  124,  190,  224,  231, 

234,  254,  298. 
Edict  of  Nantes,  5. 
Edward  III,  146. 
Eliante,  208,  210,  215. 
Elise,  126,  127,  245,  246,  251. 
Elizabeth  (Queen),  99,  276. 
Elizabethan  literature,  100,  369,  372. 


Elmire,  154,  155,  156,  165,  220,  313, 

344,  348. 
Elvire,  181,  182. 
Emerson,  173. 
England,  22,  23,  28,  34,  57,  174,  276, 

341,  359,  372. 

English  comedy-of-humors,  247. 
English   drama  and  dramatists,  201, 

203,  368. 

English  estheticism,  72. 
English  girl,  297. 
English  literature,  4,  225. 
English  masques,  12. 
English  poetry,  278. 
English,  the,  51. 
English  theater,  23,  201. 
Eraste,  260. 
'Ethics' of  Aristotle,  10. 
'Etourdi,'  33,  42,  44,  61,  63,  64,  67, 

74,  75,  80,  83,  115,  116,  163,  236, 

259,  266,  279,  280,  288,  341,  349, 

363- 

Euphuism,  Elizabethan,  72. 
Euripides,  362. 

'FABLES,'  by  La  Fontaine,  102,  237. 

'Facheux,'  83,  97,  99,  101,  124,  125, 
129,  134,  147,  187,  263,  342. 

'Fagotier,'  226. 

Fair  of  St.  Germain,  20. 

Falstaff,  2,  94,  115,  121,  262,  335,  369. 

Father  Knickerbocker,  55. 

Faust,  213. 

'Femmes  Savantes,'  75,  no,  162,  163, 
205,  256,  267,  285,  287,  288,  289, 
290,  292,  294,  297,  300,  302,  305, 

339,  34i,  343,  353,  354,  372- 
Fielding,  358,  360. 
Flanders,  168. 
Flaubert,  59. 
Flechiers,  71. 
Fletcher,  364. 
Florence,  4,  276. 
Fontainebleau,  99,  166. 
Ford,  115,  365. 

Fouquet,  36,  96,  97,  101,  129,  307. 
'Fourberies  de  Scapin,'  14,  225,  279, 

281,  282,  288,  289,  341. 
'Franc  Archer  de  Baignolet,'  48. 
France,  17,  22,  23,  24,  28,  34,  38,  39, 

45,  58,  69,  72,  96,  97,  105,  106,  117, 

125,  140,  145,  146,  149,  166,  175, 

177,    198,    210,    212,    276,    295,    309, 

314,  328,  331,  345,  359,  372. 
Francis  I,  140. 
Franklin,  325,  337. 
French  Academy,  4. 


38o 


INDEX 


French  comedy,  203,  249,  277,  354. 

French  comic  writer,  51,  60. 

French  drama,  8,  93,  302,  303. 

French  dramatists,  162,  201,  206,  278, 
360. 

French  farces  and  farce  writers,  47, 
49,  So,  Si,  58,  228,  234. 

French  girl,  297. 

French  history,  5. 

French  language,  9,  70. 

French  literature,  5,  66,  71,  102,  330. 

French  physicians  in  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, 198. 

French  poetry,  26. 

French  prose,  164. 

French,  the,  51,  327,  328,  329,  330 

331- 

French  theaters,  24,  342. 
French  tragedy,  4. 
French  writers,  3,  72. 
'  Frogs'  of  Aristophanes,  1 29. 
Fronde,  35,  36,  45,  60,  140,  145,  154, 

212. 

Frontenac,  174. 
Frosine,  355. 

GALEN,  198. 

Galileo,  13. 

Gallicans,  256. 

Gascon,  14. 

Gassendi,  13,  14,  197. 

Gaston  d'Orleans,  17. 

Gauls,  the,  188. 

Gautier,  159. 

'Gendre  de  M.  Poirier/  163. 

'Georges  Dandin,'  no,  236,  238,  239, 

240,  241,  251,  253,  34-4,  351,  356. 
George  Meredith,  128,  368. 
George  Sand,  59. 
Germans,  the,  328. 
Germany,  57,  372. 
Gerome,  148. 
Geronte,  227. 
Ghost  in  'Hamlet/  365. 
'Gil  Bias,'  360. 
Globe  Theater  in  London,   24,   177, 

343,  347- 

'Gloire  du  Val-de-Grace,'1  272. 
Goethe,  37,  in,  252,  313,  338,  358, 

361. 

Goldoni,  8,  359. 
Goldsmith,  359. 
Gorgibus,  75,  85,  260. 
Gorgonism  of  Spain,  72. 
Greco-Roman  comedy,  248. 
Grand-Chateler,  28. 
'Grand  Cyrus,'  by  Scudery,  34,  123. 


Grand  Turk,  269. 

Grandet,  334,  353. 

Greek,  its  Asianism,  72. 

Greek  dramatists,  162. 

Greek  girl,  306. 

Greeks,  the,  327. 

Greene,  205. 

Grenoble,  34,  41. 

Grimarest,  14,  15,  22,  105,  149,  199, 

31?,  321,  335- 
Gros-Guillaume,  258. 
"Gros  Rene,"  see  du  Pare. 
Gue"negaud,  320. 
GueYin,  320,  321. 
Guillem  de  Castro,  51. 

HALI,  231,  279. 
Hall  of  the  Caryatides,  42. 
'Hamlet,'    39,   44,   76,  82,   129,   159, 
183,  204,  206,  213,  333,  343,  365, 

371- 

Hamlet's  Players,  365. 
Hardy,  5,  51. 
Harlay,  318. 
Harlequin,  54,  56. 
Harold  Skimpole,  307. 
Harpagon,   245,   246,   247,   248,   249, 

250,  251,  252,  282,  334,  353,  355, 

365,  37°- 
Henriette,    290,    291,    292,    293,    296, 

297,  299,  301,  306,  344,  354. 
'Henry  IV,'  178. 
'Henry  V,'  178. 
Herve,  Mile.,  44. 
Hindustan,  57. 
Hippocrates,  197,  198. 
Hippolyte,  61,  62. 
Holberg,  359. 
Holland,  8. 

Horace,  64,  103,  116,  118,  272,  319. 
'Horaces,'  by  Corneille,  20,  117. 
Horace  (young  lover),  115. 
Horace  Walpole,  220. 
Hotel  de  Bourgogne,  20,  27,  28,  40,  42, 

48,  51,  87,  104,  128,  129,  130,  167, 

177,  277,  309,  320. 
H6tel  de  Guenegaud,  320. 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet,  69,  77. 
'House  of  Moliere,'  320. 

IAGO,  160,  183,  365,  368. 

Iberian  peninsula,  51. 

Ibsen,  157. 

Ibsen's  'Enemy  of  the  People,'  214. 

Illustre  Theatre,  24,  25,  27,  28. 

Illyria,  369. 

'Imposteur,'  168. 


INDEX 


'Impromptu  de  Versailles,'  39,  129, 
131,  133,  136,  147,  158,  305,  342, 

365- 

'Institutes'  of  Porphyry,  10. 
Isabella,  55,  95,  96. 
Isidore,  231,  232. 
Italian  actors,  32. 
Italian  comedians,  42,  57,  61,  68,  166, 

278,  279,  346. 
Italian  comedy-of-masks,  33,  54,  61, 

78. 

Italian  farces,  32,  58,  61,  287. 
Italians,  the,  51,  54,  56,  63,  204. 
Italy,  19,  54,  61,  62,  166. 

JALOUSIE  DU  BARBOUILLE,  59. 

James  I,  167,  276. 

Jansenism,  169. 

Jansenist,  363. 

Jansenists,  34,  174,  256. 

Japanese  playgoers,  88. 

Jaques,  214,  365,  370. 

Jesuits,  8,  10,  n,  12,  13,  14,  34,  38, 

94,  170,  174,  197,  256. 
Jodelet,  68,  75,  76,  83,  345. 
John  Bull,  55. 
Jourdain,   Monsieur,    267,    268,    269, 

270,  355- 
Julie,  260,  262. 
'Julius  Caesar,'  372. 
Jupiter,  233,  235,  237,  238,  275. 
Juvenal,  319. 

KEMBLE,  JOHN  PHILIP,  345. 
Kepler,  13. 
King  James,  12. 
Kyd,  47,  205. 

LABICHE,  3,  359. 
La  Bruyere,  3,  171. 
La  Fleche,  343. 

La  Fontaine,  5,  20,  25,  37,  94,  101, 
102,  103,  105,  164,  176,  237,  257, 

275,  324,  329,  335,  358. 

La  Grange,  10,  15,  41,  68,  69,  75,  76, 
79,  83,  87,  97,  no,  130,  138,  154, 
168,  175,  176,  181,  191,  229,  230, 
233,  239,  265,  290,  313,  320,  345. 

La  Mothe  le  Vayer,  175,  199,  272. 

La  Motte  Fouque,  122. 

'Lady  of  Lyons,'  76. 

Languedoc,  33,  36. 

Latin  comedies  and  tragedies,  12,  60, 
93,  96,  155,  162,  285,  356. 

Latin  language,  9. 

Latin  plays,  12. 


Latin  quotations,  55. 

Latins,  the,  3,  328. 

Le  Breton,  359. 

Le  Brun,  272. 

Le  Sage,  169,  283,  359,  360. 

Leandre,  61,  62,  227. 

Leigh  Hunt,  307. 

Lelie,  61,  62,  85. 

Lent,  31. 

Leonor,  95. 

Leonora,  55. 

L'Espey,  68. 

Lessing,  222,  359,  362,  363. 

'Life  is  a  Dream,'  188. 

Limoges,  32,  262. 

Lincoln,  337. 

Lisette,  the  maid,  191,  197. 

'Logic'  of  Aristotle,  10. 

London,  4,  24,  45,  46,  100,  159,  347. 

Lope  de  Vega,  4,  64,  80,  93,  362. 

Lord  Morley,  140,  204,  257,  323. 

Louis  Philippe,  23. 

Louis  XIII,  4,  8,  18,  51,  69,  186. 

Louis  XIV,  4,  5,  12,  13,  34,  35,  36,  42, 
51,  72,  80,  87,  96,  99,  101,  115,  123, 
129,  133,  139,  140,  141,  146,  147, 
148,  149,  156,  158,  159,  164,  167, 
168,  169,  187,  190,  199,  210,  211, 

212,  229,  233,  237,  255,  256,  266, 
267,  274,  276,  278,  282,  295,  308, 
309,  310,  316,  320,  330,  331,  356. 

Louison,  313. 

Louvre,  the,  3,  42,  80,  86,  134,  136, 

207. 

Love's  Labor's  Lost,'  47,  63, 341,  363. 
Loyola,  Ignatius,  8. 
Lucian,  319. 
Lucile,  267,  269. 
Lucinde,  190,  191,  227. 
Lucretius,  10,  n,  13,  14,  172,  220,  305. 
Lulli,  149,  260,  276,  308,  309,  310,  319. 
Lullier,  13. 
Luther,  337. 

Lycee  Louis-le-Grand,  8. 
Lycidas,  126. 
Lyly,  47,  205. 

Lyons,  18,  32,  33,  34,  35,  314. 
Lytton,  Lord,  19. 

'M.  DE  LA  SOUCHE,'   Il6. 

Macbeth,  351,  367,  371. 
Machiavelli,  58. 
Madame  de  Lafayette,  70,  307. 
Madame  de  Longueville,  69,  73. 
Madame  de  Montespan,  72. 
Madame  de  Rambouillet,  69,  70,  71, 
79,  345- 


382 


INDEX 


Madame  de  Sable*,  69,  73. 
Madame  de  Se"vigne,  70,  307. 
Madame  de  Sottenville,  239. 
Madame  Jourdain,  267,  346. 
Madame  Pernelle,  154,  155,  156,  334, 

346. 

Madame,  wife  of  Monsieur,  136,  286. 
Madeleine,  345. 
Madelon,  75,  285,  345. 
Mademoiselle  Beauval,  344. 
Mademoiselle  de  Moliere,  313,  319. 
Mademoiselle  de  Scudery,  70,  73,  345. 
Mademoiselle  de  la  Valliere,  72,  137. 
Mademoiselle  Du  Pare,  104. 
Mademoiselle  Moliere,  see  Bejart  (Ar- 

mande). 

Maeterlinck,  296. 
'Maitre  Pierre  Patelin,'  48. 
'Malade  Imaginaire/  7,  in,  198,  200, 

218,  282,  308,  309,  310,  314,  317, 

34i,  344- 
Malherbe,  70. 
Mamamouchi,  269,  314. 
'Mandragora'  of  Machiavelli,  58. 
Marais,  20,  2£  67,  83,  87. 
Marais  theater,  320. 
'Mariage  de  Figaro,'  134,  136,  163. 
'Mariage  Force/  342. 
Mariane,  154,  156,  165,  245,  246,  357. 
Marie  Antoinette,  112. 
Marie  Herve,  107. 
Marinism  of  Italian,  72. 
Marivaux,  comedies  of,  71,  231,  264. 

359- 

Marlowe,  47,  295,  362. 
Marquis,  126,  127. 
Marquis  de  Montausier,  106. 
Marshal  de  Vivonne,  106. 
Martine,  291,  299,  356. 
Mascarille,  62,  63,  75,  81,  84,  94,  155, 

231,  257,  260,  279,  344,  356,  365- 
Mauvillain,  199,  200,  316. 
Mazarin,  35,  36,  80,  96,  140. 
'Measure  for  Measure,'  157,  170,  241. 
'  Medecin  malgre  lui,'  223,  225,  226, 

228,  311. 

'Medecin  Volant,'  59,  84. 
Mediterranean,  128. 
'M&icerte/  229,  230. 
'Menaechmi,'  244. 
Manage,  69,  79,  305,  307. 
Menander,  i,  46,  93,  162,  269,  361, 

362. 
'Menteur,'  by  Corneille,  20,  27,  51, 

277. 

'Merchant  of  Venice,'  248,  249,  341. 
Mercury,  238. 


Meredith,  George,  46,  360. 

Merimee,  188. 

'Merry  Wives/  94,  99,  115,  269,  341, 

353- 

Messina,  61,  117. 

Metayer,  27. 

'Meunier/  48. 

Meyerbeer,  275. 

Middle  Ages  (the  late),  30,  48,  98. 

Mignard,  101,  272,  273. 

Milton,  4,  19,  in,  173. 

Milton's  Satan,  184. 

Minerva,  134. 

'Mirame/  87. 

Miranda,  118,  297. 

'Misanthrope'  of  Moliere,  10,  36,  54, 
102,  no,  161,  163,  180,  201,  202, 
203,  204,  205,  206,  207,  210,  213, 

219,    221,    222,    223,    225,    226,    241, 
242,    244,    253,    259,    278,    288,    298, 

301,  339,  340,  342,  352,  355>  374- 
Mrs.  Ford,  115. 
Mrs.  Malaprop,  283. 
Mrs.  Siddons,  344. 
Moliere,  Louis,  175. 
Moliere,  Madeleine,  176,  321. 
'Monde  ou  1'on  s'ennuie/  163,  353. 
Monsieur  (Duke  of  Anjou),  41,  67,  87, 

!67. 

Monsieur  de  Bonnefoi,  313. 
Monsieur  de  Montalant,  321. 
Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac,  198,  259, 

260,  261,  262,  263,  264,  266,  267, 

269,  270,  279,  282,  311,  334. 
Monsieur  de  Sottenville,  239. 
Monsieur  Diafoirius,  312. 
Monsieur  Fleurant,  312. 
Monsieur  Jourdain,    267,    270,    315, 

334,  352. 

Monsieur  Purgon,  312. 
Montaigne,  71,  122,  164,  172,  228,  301, 

319,  324,  325,  326,  327. 
Montausier,  73. 
Montesquieu,  8,  71. 
Montmorency,  4. 
Montpellier,  34,  316. 
Morality,  250. 
Moreto,  137,  138. 
Moron,  138. 
'Mort  de  Pompe"e/  by  Corneille,  25, 

44. 

Mozart,  188. 
Musset,  188,  372. 

NANTES,  32. 
Naples,  54,  281. 
Napoleon,  141,  147. 


INDEX 


383 


Narbonne,  17,  18,  19,  32,  34. 

Neapolitan,  the,  55. 

Nicole,  268,  314,  343,  344,  356. 

'Nicomede,'  by  Corneille,  42. 

Night,  238. 

Nisard,  301,  328. 

Norman,  332. 

Normandy,  36. 

Notary,  292,  293,  294. 

Notre  Dame,  3. 

OBERAMMERGAU,  57. 

Old  Adam,  365. 

Opera,  12,  88,  309,  320. 

Orgon,  154,  155,  156,  160,  220,  251, 

253*  3">  313,  334,  344,  34»,  355, 

356,  357,  37°- 
Orlando,  297,  370. 
Orleans,  15,  16,  17. 
Orleans,  Duke  of,  28,  29. 
Oronte,  207,  208,  209,  260,  262. 
'Othello/ 367,  371. 

PALAIS-ROYAL,  3,  8,  87,  88,  93,  99, 
103,  138,  147,  167,  168,  175,  177, 

178,    183,    190,    202,    226,    228,    235, 
238,    243,    256,    260,    265,    266,    274, 

278,  279,    282,    287,    289,    309,    310, 

318,  343,  346. 

Palladio,  57,  346. 

Pandolphe,  61,  62. 

Pantaleone,  the  Venetian,  55. 

Pantaloon,  54. 

Pantheon,  319. 

Panulphe,  168. 

Paris,  2,  3,  13,  18,  20,  22,  24,  25,  26, 
28,  29,  30,  32,  34,  35,  37,  38,  39,  40, 
41,  42,  44,  46,  49,  51,  58,  59,  64,  66, 
67,  68,  69,  73,  74,  75,  78,  83,  89,  91, 
94,  95,  98,  100,  101,  104,  108,  in, 
138,  140,  145,  155,  164,  168,  176, 
186,  199,  221,  222,  225,  228,  229, 
232,  258,  259,  267,  269,  272,  277, 

279,  282,  284,  285,  289,  310,  316, 
3i8,  332,  342,  343,  348,  358,  363. 

Parisian  play-goers,  65,  86,  177,  191, 

253,  265,  342. 
Parnassians,  the,  71. 
Pascal,  5,  70,  172,  324,  327,  329. 
'Pastorale  Comique,'  230,  283. 
'Peace  of  the  Church,'  255. 
Perrault,  Charles,  16,  273. 
'Perro  del  Hortelano,'   by  Lope  de 

Vega,  52. 
Petit-Bourbon,  42,  51,  67,  68,  86,  87, 

147. 
Pez&ias,  34,  314. 


Pharisees,  the,  171. 

Philaminte,  290,  291,  294,  295,  296, 

298,  3°3,  307,  346,  354- 
Philinte,  207,  208,  209,  210,  217,  218. 
'Physics'  of  Aristotle,  10. 
Picardy,  262. 

Pierre  Mignard,  25,  37,  272. 
Piliers  des  Halles,  7. 
'Pillars  of  Society,'  349. 
Place  de  la  Concorde,  4. 
Place  Royale,  28. 
Platonist,  91. 
Plautus,  i,  10,  n,  94,  102,  128,  234, 

235,  244,  247,  319,  365,  375. 
Players  (of  Hamlet),  129. 
'Pleasures  of  the  Enchanted  Island,' 

136,  139,  165. 
Pleiiade,  the,  70. 
Plutarch,  6,  319. 
Pluto,  274. 

Poe,  Edgar  A.,  122,337. 
Polichinelle  and  Pierrot,  54. 
'Polyeucte,'  by  Corneille,  20. 
Pont-neuf,  7,  49. 

Poquelin,  Jean,  5,  6,  7,  14,  18,  34,  285. 
Poquelin,  Jean  (2),  6,  101. 
Poquelin,  Madeleine,  6. 
Porphyry's  'Institutes,'  10. 
Port  Royal,  34. 
Porte  de  Nesle,  22. 
Portia,  314. 

Pourceaugnac  (Monsieur  de),  262. 
'Pratique  du  Theatre,'  34. 
Precieuses  Ridicules,'  the,  67,  69,  73, 

77,  78,  80,  81,  84,  85,  94,  114,  120, 

124,  126,  229,  254,  266,  285,  289, 

290,  345- 

Prince  of  Conti,  n,  33,  104. 
'Princesse  d'Elide,'  136,  137,  139,  175, 

243,  265. 

Provenfal  dialect,  262. 
Provence,  36,  314. 
'Provincial  Letters,'  327. 
'Psyche,'  237,  274,  275,  276,  277,  278, 

279,  3°9,  342,  347- 
Ptolemaic  system,  13. 
Pulcinella,  55. 
Punch  and  Judy,  54,  281. 
Puritans,  the,  171,  363. 
Pyrenees,  the,  52,  186. 

QUINAULT,    276. 

Quintilian,  9. 

RABELAIS,  48,  50,  51,  71,  122,  164, 
167,  172,  228,  260,  301,  319,  324, 
327,  329,  350- 


INDEX 


Rachel,  345. 

Racine,  5,  64,  68,  72,  94,  103,  104,  123, 

131,  149,  164,  176,  237,  277,  331, 

332,  335,  362,  363,  364. 
Regency,  the,  169. 
Regnard,  3,  359. 
Regnier,  3. 

'Rehearsal'  of  Buckingham,  129. 
Renan,  350. 
Renascence,  30,  48,  54,  55,  57,  72,  275, 

330,  373- 

Renascence,  the  Italian,  162. 
Restoration  dramatists,  304. 
Revenge,  250. 
Revolution,  the,  319. 
Rheims,  34. 
'Richard  II,'  46. 
'Richard  III/  180,  365. 
Richelieu,  3,  4,  8,  n,  17,  30,  34,  45, 

87,  317- 

'Richelieu'  of  Lord  Lytton,  19. 
Rochefoucauld,  326. 
'Rodogune,'  by  Corneille,  44. 
'  Roman  Comique,'  30. 
Roman  dramatists,  235. 
Roman  f reedmen,  1 28. 
Roman  villagers,  54. 
Rome,  3,  318. 
'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  114. 
Rosalind,  297,  370. 
Rotrou,  5,  31,  51,  233,  234. 
Rouen,  27,  41. 
Rousseau,  214,  359. 
Rutebceuf,  3. 
'Ruy  Bias,'  76. 

SAINT  GERMAIN,  49,  138,  229,  232, 

233,  264. 

Saint-Simon,  211. 
Sainte-Beuve,  105,  116,  169,  273,  323, 


353,  358. 
t.  He 


St.  Helena,  147. 

St.  Honore,  rue,  6. 

St.  Remi,  79. 

Samson,  345. 

Sancho  Panza,  185. 

Sbrigani,  260,  262,  279. 

Scaliger,  162,  163. 

Scapin,  56,  279,  280,  281,  344. 

Scaramouche,  20,  44,  166,  258. 

'Scaramouche  Ermite,'  166. 

Scarron,  3,  30,  31,  47,  49,  53,  90,  116, 

121,  352. 
Schiller,  322. 
Schlegel,  359. 

'School  for  Scandal,'  163,  208. 
Scott,  236,  358,  360. 


Scribe,  157,  274. 

Scudery's  'Grand  Cyrus,'  34. 

Scuderys,  the,  71. 

Seine,  3,  4,  10,  27. 

Senator,  232. 

Seneca,  94. 

Sevigne,  Madame  de,  5. 

'Sganarelle,'  83,  84,  85,  86,  88,  94, 
95,  96,  115,  135,  136,  181,  182,  185, 
190, 191, 192,  226,  227,  231,  257, 344. 

Shakspere,  2,  4,  16,  21,  22,  23,  24,  39, 
40,  44,  46,  58,  60,  74,  80,  81,  89,  99, 
100,  105,  106,  116,  117,  118,  121, 
129,  157,  159,  160,  163,  167,  171, 
177,  178,  183,  186,  201,  205,  206, 
225,  226,  228,  234,  241,  248,  250, 
255,  258,  263,  269,  297,  301,  304, 
330,  333,  337,  34i,  343,  347,  348, 
3Si,  353,  357,  36i,  362,  363,  364, 
365,  366,  367,  368,  369,  370,  371, 
372,  373- 

Shelley,  220,  296,  337. 

Sheridan,  129,  208,  342,  359. 

Shirley,  362. 

Shrigani,  260,  262,  279. 

Shylock,  221,  246,  250,  252,  365. 

'Sicilien,'  230,  231,  232,  279,  342. 

Sicily,  231. 

Sigean,  18. 

Sir  Epicure  Mammon,  247. 

'Sir  Martin  Marall,'  236. 

Smollett,  360. 

Sophocles,  46,  94,  361,  362,  366,  368. 

Sosia,  238. 

Sottenville,  Madame  de,  239. 

Sottenville,  Monsieur  de,  239. 

Sottenvilles,  the,  241,  355. 

Spain,  17,  51,  117,  362. 

Spaniards,  53,  54,  137,  l66- 

Spanish,  51. 

Spanish  comedians,  51.  • 

Spanish  dramatists,  47,  52,  162. 

Spanish-Italian,  177,  180,  185,  189. 

Spanish  literature,  4. 

Spanish  mysticism,  178. 

Spanish  poets,  53. 

Spanish  stories,  117. 

Stedman,  350. 

Steele,  359. 

Stendhal,  72. 

Stratford,  94,  362. 

Swift,  335. 

Switzerland,  13. 

Symbolists,  the,  71. 

TABARIN,  7. 

Taine,  58,  156,  210,  329. 


INDEX 


385 


Tallement  de  Reaux,  15. 
'Taming  of  the  Shrew,'  313. 
'Tartuffe,'  7,   15,  82,  no,   139,   147, 

154,  155,  i56,  *57>  158,  159.  l6o> 
161,  162,  163,  165,  166,  167,  168, 
169,  173,  174,  i75,  177,  178,  i79, 

l8o,  183,  199,  201,  202,  204,  205, 

207,  221,  222,  223,  225,  233,  250, 

251,  252,  253,  254,  255,  256,  257, 

267,  268,  285,  288,  290,  291,  301, 

305,  311,  313,  314,  320,  334,  339> 
340,  341,  343,  344,  348,  349,  35*, 
353,  355,  363,  365,  368. 

Tasso,  8. 

Terence,  i,  10,  n,  57,  93,  94,  102,  128, 

234,  279,  3*9,  375- 

Teutonic,  330. 

Teutonic  poetry,  164. 

Thackeray,  360. 

Theatre  Francais  in  Paris,  24,  65,  253, 
348. 

'Thebaiide,'  176. 

Thirty-Years  War,  34. 

Tibero  Fiorelli,  20. 

Time,  182. 

'Timon  of  Athens,'  214,  365. 

'Tite  et  Berenice,'  277. 

'Titus  Andronicus,'  46. 

Toinette,  313,  314,  343,  344,  356. 

Torelli,  44. 

Touchstone,  370. 

Toulon,  32. 

Tour  de  Nesle,  4. 

'Traite  de  la  Comedie  et  des  Specta- 
cles/ 33. 

Trissotin,  291,  292,  293,  294,  295,  300, 
303,  304,  306,  307,  359. 

Tristan  1'Hermite,  27. 

Trufaldin,  61,62. 

Tudors,  the,  28. 

Tuileries,  3,  4,  274,  278. 

'Turcaret,'  169. 

Turenne,  35. 

Turkey,  267. 

Turks,  267. 


Turlupin,  7. 

'Twelfth  Night,'  170,  363. 

'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,'  363. 

ULTRAMONTANES,  256. 
Uncle  Sam,  55. 
Uranie,  126. 
Urbain  Grandier,  4. 

VADIUS,  293,  294,  303,  304,  3°7- 

Val-de-Grace,  272. 

Valere,  95,   154,   156,  165,  245,   246, 

248,  357- 

Vaux,  97,  98,  101,  129. 
.Vendee,  32. 
Venetian,  the,  55. 
Venus,  134,  275. 
Venus  of  Praxiteles,  306. 
Verges,  186. 
Vergil,  103. 
Versailles,  38,  129,  136,  147,  158,  167. 

190,  207,  238,  332. 
Vicenza,   57,  346. 
Victor  Hugo,  63,  163,  330,  362. 
Vieilles-Etuves,  rue  des,  6. 
Vigny,  Alfred  de,  19. 
Villon,  3. 
Viola,  371. 
Voiture,  51,  69,  71. 
Volpone,   247. 
Voltaire  (Marie  Francois  Arouet),  i,  3: 

7,80,  95,  117,  159,  330,  362. 

WAGNER,  275. 
Walpole,  Horace,  220. 
Washington,  351. 
Watteau,  122. 
Waverley  Novels,  360. 
Whitman,  350. 
'Winter's  Tale,'  367. 
Wycherley,  359. 

XAVIER,  FRANCIS,  8. 
ZOLA,  333. 


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